An InformationWeek 2010 survey reported 54 percent of respondents prefer a single server vendor, to take advantage of purchasing power, knowledge, and support. Oracle is delivering just that with the launch of a complete refresh of its Sun Fire x86 cluster systems which provide high performing application-to-disk solutions capable of being managed and supported as a single system from a single vendor.
(Get More Information . .)

If accelerating on-line transaction processing (OLTP) and data warehouse performance holds any interest, then take a look at Sun Technical Staffer Cherry Shu's article on using the Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array with IBM DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows. A Sun Blueprints article authored by Shu explains how the combination of flash and disk technology can be applied to overcome disk latency bottlenecks that impede performance for applications such as the DB2 database.
(Get More Information . .)

Writing in ZDNet Asia, Alan Stevens describes the 2U Sun Fire X4270 and Sun Fire X4275 servers. He notes that they are essentially the same machines, with exactly the same chassis, identical motherboards, processor and memory options. The only real difference is in the storage: the X4270 has sixteen 2.5in. hot-swap drive bays, whereas the X4275 offers twelve 3.5in. drive bays and a choice of drives in capacities up to 2TB per spindle. A review of the Sun Fire X4170 in eWeek also voices praise for this member of the family.
(Get More Information . .)