Introduction

The Sun Fire B100s Blade Server is the next evolutionary step in horizontal computing. The Sun Blade B100s server is designed to be more efficient and economical than traditional server products. Along with the Sun Fire B1600 Blade System Chassis and its highly available system components, the Sun Fire B100s Blade Server helps enable the building of a flexible and scalable IT infrastructure that accommodates growth, uses computing resources more efficiently, reduces time-to-market by shortening deployment cycles, increases availability, and decreases operational cost.

The Sun Fire B100s Blade Server offers the following powerful features:

• 5.33 CPUs per rack unit compared to rack-optimized one processor 1U servers.
• An Intelligent Shelf offering integrated redundant power supplies, up to 2 Gigabit Ethernet switches, separate management network, service indicator lights, customer replaceable and hot-swappable components and space for up to 16 blades
• Compatible with Specialty Blades (SSL or load balancing Blades), general purpose Blade Servers (SPARC® or x86) and Linux or Solaris Operating Environment
• Simplified deployment for ease of use
• Optimized for rack environment with integrated switches and system controllers
• Optimized for integrated network

Product Family Placement
The Sun Fire B100s Blade Server fits solely within the Sun Fire B1600 Blade System Chassis. It is designed to complement discrete single and dual processor servers by providing a platform that is higher in density and richer in available options for Tier 0 and Tier 1 computational requirements.

Key Users
Sun's Blade Server Platform is suitable for users who want to optimize deployment and management of services by increasing resource utilization and maximizing efficiency.

Sun Fire B100s Blade Server represents the next leap in compute density, flexibility, and rapid deployment. It offers high-density computing power in a compact chassis with improved environmentals, reduced cabling,redundant power supplies, and failover capability, all at a low cost. Its inherent modularity and flexibility offer tremendous values to help accommodate growth, use computing resources more efficiently, reduce time-to-market by shortening deployment cycles, increase availability, and lower operational costs.

Key Markets
The Sun Fire B100s Blade Server is ideal for horizontally scaled applications or distributed applications in such areas as:

• Enterprise Data Centers
• Financial Services
• Service Provider
• Technical Computing

System Architecture
The Sun Fire B100s server is a network-centric, industry standard based, heterogeneous Sun Fire B1600 Blade Platform.

Scalability and Horizontal Scaling
Sun Fire B100s server is designed from the outset to be an excellent platform for hosting horizontally scalable applications, that is, those which do not depend upon symmetric multi processing to provide increased performance in a multi processor environment. Horizontally scaled systems achieve high performance by dividing the application load from the clients between replicated application instances each running on it own server. Each Sun Fire B100s Blade is a discrete server running its own instance of the Solaris Operating Environment and applications. Up to 16 SPARC® Sun Fire B100s Blade Servers can fit in a 3U Intelligent Shelf. Integrated Gigabit Ethernet interconnect delivers high speed built-in networking services to each blade for communicating with peers and accessing additional resources such as storage and backup.

Heterogeneous Platform
Sun Fire B100s Blade Servers fit into the Sun Fire B1600 Blade System Chassis and can be used in conjunction with future SPARC/Solaris blades, x86/Solaris and Linux blades, and a choice of Specialty blades. All current and future general purpose blades will be compatible with Sun ONE Studio and Sun ONE middleware. This allows one to optimize for their application requirements for growing business needs and changing requirements.

Intelligent Shelf
The Sun Fire B1600 Blade System Chassis supports up to two system controllers for administration and monitoring, and provides a private/secure interface to system and service management. In addition, it includes dual layer 2 switches for flexible VLAN configurations, offers connectivity to data networks, and provides a secure bridge between the Blade Server chassis and external management networks. Sun Fire B1600 Blade Platform enables network architecture design to support redundancy at higher levels than the chassis. Individual or groups of blade can be made redundant through load balancing. Such simplicity makes it easier to meet stringent service level requirements.

Systems Management
The management of the Sun Fire B1600 Blade System Chassis and Sun Fire blades operates at several levels:

• Blade and Shelf Level Setup and Configuration
  Browser-based Graphical User Interface (GUI) interfaces and comprehensive, industry-standard Command Line Interfaces (CLIs) are available for configuring the switches and the other shelf components. This functionality extends to VLAN configuration, user administration, fault diagnosis, and repair.
   
• Monitoring of Blade Servers and Shelf Components
  Using industry-standard Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), it is possible to integrate Sun Fire blades into any compatible customer monitoring environment.
  • Monitor and report hardware and environmental status
  • Aggregate interface for replacing and restarting CRUs
  • Inventory physical components of a group of blades
     
• Sun N1 System Management
  The N1 Provisioning Server 3.0 Blades Edition from Sun dramatically lowers total cost of ownership. At the chassis level, Sun's N1 System Management will simplify initial setup, configuration, and deployment of blades. With multiple shelves (rack level), the Administrator can deploy applications, provision blades, and aggregate firmware and software updates.