Sun Fire T2000 review

Electrical design

You can't talk about the Sun Fire T2000 without first considering the UltraSPARC T1 processor, the most revolutionary UltraSPARC design since SPARC went 64-bit. Instead of widening the address space, though, this time Sun engineers have added processing power -- a lot of it -- in the form of four CPU cores (or two or eight in other T1 models). But for those four cores, there is only one puny floating-point unit, so forget about doing anything (like rendering) that requires floating-point math. According to the Linux kernel SPARC maintainer, the UltraSPARC T1 is made for memory-intensive integer operations. So right off the bat, if your software makes heavy use of the FPU, don't even think about the Sun Fire T2000 or any UltraSPARC T1-based machines.

Sun calls this new design "CoolThreads" because the number of concurrent threads has increased exponentially while the level of power consumption has supposedly gone down. For years, the engineering solution to adding more processing strength had an unfortunate side-effect: higher electricity consumption. Because of increased energy costs, shortages, and regulations, major CPU manufacturers are struggling to re-engineer their processors to use less electricity without losing processing strength. Lately this has included several different strategies: adding more on-die cache memory; implementing multiple CPU cores; 64-bit instruction set architectures; and higher-frequency RAM with greater data throughput capabilities. The UltraSPARC T1 implements all of these options.

For more information about the UltraSPARC T1 processor, visit Sun's T1 Web site.

Physical design

In terms of hardware design and assembly, the Sun Fire T2000 is brilliantly engineered. It's a totally screwless disassembly for all user-serviceable parts. I could remove and replace any major component in the system in less than one minute from power-down -- RAM, power supply, case fan, hard drive, or peripheral cards. The CPU is bolted down with four torx screws, but if that's all there is to it (if it's not glued to the processor, and the processor isn't hardwired to the board), I could have a new processor and heatsink installed in less than five minutes.

The dual 450w power supplies are redundant and hot-swappable. Both must be plugged in to avoid a non-fatal rear fan error condition.

With two hard drives, sixteen RAM modules, and no extra add-ons, the T2000 weighs in at around 36 pounds. One technician can lug it around, but the lack of handles makes the machine more cumbersome to install and remove. Its physical dimensions are 3.5" deep by 17.3 wide x 24.3" deep. Rack mounting brackets and a rear cable conduit assembly are included with the system.

The CPU is cooled by an aluminum heatsink. There is no CPU fan; apparently the processor doesn't get hot enough to warrant one. There are two rear fans in the power supplies, both of which emit a high-pitched whir, even when the system is powered off. Three hot-swappable 80mm fans are mounted in a compartment in the front of the chassis; these suck air in, over the RAM modules and CPU, then past the peripheral cards, and out through the grating in the rear. It's a brilliant airflow design -- the most intelligent I have ever seen, and far superior to the Sun Fire v20z and v40z designs.

Sun Fire T2000 internals

Installation, setup, and configuration

Aside from the anemic FPU, system configuration is a huge negative point for the Sun Fire T2000. It doesn't have a video device, and it doesn't support the addition of a peripheral video card, so the only way to connect to it is through a network or serial connection. Unfortunately, the network connection is disabled by default, so you need to initially connect through the serial port. But wait! You can't use the 9-pin serial port because, for some mysterious reason, it is not connected to the control module. So how, then, do you connect to the bloody thing? You have to use an RJ45 serial connection. This is the first time I've ever seen such a thing, so I did not have a cable or adapter for it -- and the machine did not come with any kind of adapter. I couldn't even find a terminal for sale online that had a serial RJ45 connection, though I'm sure there must be at least one model out there somewhere.

You can make a connector, or you can buy one. I did a Froogle search and found an RJ45 to 9-pin adapter, but when I tried to use it, it didn't seem to work. Or perhaps I didn't have things configured properly, although the 9-pin serial ports have worked just fine in the past. Whatever the case was, I spent about $20 for the cable and several hours trying out different configurations, reading online documentation (the system comes with a license agreement for Solaris, but otherwise no paper documentation at all), and messing with cables. Servers shouldn't require this kind of hassle -- you should just plug them into a standard terminal or a 10/100 network and they should be ready to go. Disabling network access to the T2000 was a stupid thing for Sun to do, and ultimately pushed my opinion of this machine too far to the negative side to have any hope of coming back.

Sun Fire T2000 back panel

Perhaps the reason why Sun is constantly crowing about paid support is because so many of their products are so stinkin' hard to use that you need Sun to help you put them into production. It's not like I'm new at this, either, so flame me all you want, but the true fault lies with the hardware manufacturer that created this monster.

Environmental

Despite the reduced number of fans, the machine is still relatively loud, even when powered off. It's not the jet engine that other, previous Sun Fire models are, but you don't want to work next to it. If your rack is near your desk, the T2000 is easier to live with than other Sun servers, but I don't have any experience with IBM or HP machines of equivalent power and price.

The Sun Fire T2000 draws a lot of power and thus emits a lot of heat -- twice as much as a dual-core Athlon 64 X2 3800+ machine, and significantly more than my current Pentium D-based production server. On paper, the T2000 draws less power and produces less heat than any modern dual Xeon or Opteron machine would.

There's a convenient locator LED on both the rear and the front of the machine. When you either activate the locator function or press one of the buttons, a bright white LED lets you know where your server is. There are also warning lamps for fan and PSU performance; if one of the front-mounted fan units is not spinning at the proper rate, it it is flagged for replacement. If one of the power supplies is not plugged in or is otherwise operating out of normal parameters, it also triggers the error lamp. All of these functions can also be monitored via software.

Power consumption

Sun's power usage calculator is somewhat misleading. While it will give what I believe to be a relatively accurate idea of how much power a T2000 system can draw at any given measurement point, it does not give any impression of how much the machine will cost to operate. To accurately calculate this cost, you must first know your cost per kilowatt hour (KWh). Check your energy bill to see what the current rate is. In my area, the average cost per KWh is $0.0731, which is also roughly the average for the United States as well.

To measure power consumption, you need to measure watt hours consumed in a given timeframe (preferably an hour, but you can go as low as 15 minutes and still make a resonable projection from that), then use that to project a month's costs. You also need a watt meter like this one.

The following table compares the Sun Fire T2000 against a Sun Java Workstation w2100z (dual Opteron 252, 4GB RAM, a SCSI360 10kRPM and a SATA 10kRPM hard drive, and an Nvidia Quadro FX 4000 video card), a production server based on a Pentium D 820 processor (Asus P5WD2 motherboard, 2GB RAM, SATA 7200RPM hard drive, Matrox G550 PCIe video), and an Athlon 64 X2 test server (Asus A8N-E motherboard, 1GB RAM, SATA 7200RPM hard drive, ATI Radeon X700 video card). Before anyone starts whining about using workstation motherboards in servers, you should know that the Pentium D machine is currently being used in production (the tests were performed before it went into service), and was built for a terrifically low cost. The w2100z is in the comparison because it uses the same hardware that I would expect to use in an Opteron server.

The only significant factor working against the T2000's power usage is all of the extra RAM in it. Previous power measurement tests have shown that RAM modules don't inherently add much to the power equation, but in large numbers they can add a measurable number of watt hours to the measurements. However, more RAM modules can also produce greater power efficiency if their presence reduces hard drive activity. In this instance, the T2000 numbers may be inflated by as much as $1 per month because it has so much more memory than the other test systems.

The table below shows how much power each computer draws per hour. I recorded the watt hours consumed over a period of 15 minutes of operation after power-on, and projected it out to one hour (watts) and one month (KWh). It also shows the minumum and maximum power draw readings, and the projected monthly cost of each machine.

As you can see, the Sun Fire T2000 is not really much competition for AMD64/EM64T machines when it comes to power consumption. It does draw somewhat less power than the dual Opteron system, but not by a particularly wide margin.

My conclusion based on these tests is that Sun's claims of 50% better power efficiency over "traditional Intel" servers are bunk.

Software compatibility

The Sun Fire T2000 ships with Solaris 10 and Java Enterprise System. GNU/Linux distributions are working to support the T2000, but as of this writing, support for the Niagara T1 architecture was only recently added to the Linux source code. You can read more about it on the SPARC Linux kernel maintainer's blog.

Performance

I wish I could tell you more about the T2000's performance, but it was just too difficult to get it working. I looked around on the Internet and found some other people doing synthetic benchmark testing, but no one was using any real-world test procedures. I was going to run benchmarks on Oracle 10 and MySQL 5, and Java application server benchmarks using some of Sun's Blueprints code.

My opinion, based on the stated capabilities of the UltraSPARC T1 and my past testing of Opteron, Pentium D, and UltraSPARC systems is, the T2000 might come close to the performance of a high-end dual-core dual-CPU Opteron system when it comes to integer math. It will be significantly faster for some data encryption formats (RSA is the only one I know of at the moment) because of its integrated cryptography accelerator. And lastly, any operations involving real numbers (floating point math) will make the T2000 look like a total dog. I'd like to see other reviewers do some decent non-synthetic testing on machines like these, to find out if my guess is right. If anyone knows of some reputable benchmarks, email them to me and I'll put up links to them here.

Conclusions

The Sun Fire T2000's potential strong points are overshadowed by the fact that it is a serious pain in the ass to configure, even when compared to other Sun Fire servers. You might not be able to get this machine working with your current Unix, GNU/Linux, or BSD administration equipment. Unless you're a Solaris/SPARC guru, stay away from the Sun Fire T2000.

The Sun Fire T2000 is just more of the same from Sun Microsystems: it's overhyped and looks great on paper, but costs a fortune to buy, is difficult to configure and use, and doesn't make any sense at all unless you're already on UltraSPARC-based servers. On the other hand, if you've already paid through the nose for Sun hardware in the past, why would you be willing to spend another astronomical sum on replacement machines, when you could much more cheaply switch to an Opteron-based solution?

I believe that, in the most dire computer emergencies, the only person who really feels any responsibility for your infrastructure is you, the sysadmin. The manufacturer is only on the other end of the phone because you're paying them to be there, not because they are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars for every hour or minute your server is down, or because their job is in jeopardy. That's why I'm all for building your own servers rather than relying on a third party for support and maintenance. And when I take a look at the Sun Fire T2000 and compare it to what I could do on my own, I can't help but scoff at it. I could build several, more efficient, probably better-performing AMD64 servers for a fraction of the cost of the Sun Fire T2000. If one of them had any hardware trouble, I could simply swap it out with an identical spare. In fact I could buy a whole shelf full of spare parts and keep my servers running for years and still not even reach half the cost of the T2000. No support contract necessary. I just can't see why anyone would spend $17,000 on a machine that a $1700 computer could do just as well -- or better.

Device	2U Server
Manufacturer	Sun Microsystems
Device support	Four Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) drive slots; four 10/100/1000 ports; LAN and RJ45 serial management connectors; one 9-pin serial port; four USB 1.1 ports; three low profile PCIe slots (x1, x4, x8); one available low profile PCI-X 64-bit 133mhz slot.
Market	Enterprise database and Java application servers
Price (retail)	U.S. $7800 to $27000. As configured for this review: $17000. Service and support plans are extra.
Previous version	N/A
Product Web site	Click here