An Oracle White Paper April 2011 SPARC Enterprise M3000, M4000, M5000, M8000, and M9000 Server Architecture Flexible, Mainframe-Class Compute Power

Oracle White Paper— SPARC Enterprise M3000, M4000, M5000, M8000, and M9000 Server Architecture Introduction Organizations now rely on technology more than ever before. Today, compute systems play a critical role in every function from product design to customer order fulfillment. In many cases, business success is dependent on continuous availability of IT services. Once only required in pockets of the datacenter, mainframe-class reliability and serviceability are now essential for systems throughout the enterprise. In addition, powering datacenter servers and keeping services running through...

Oracle White Paper— SPARC Enterprise M3000, M4000, M5000, M8000, and M9000 Server Architecture SPARC Enterprise M-Series Servers from Oracle Massive compute power, a resilient system architecture, flexible resource control features, and the advanced capabilities of Oracle Solaris 10 combine in SPARC Enterprise servers to provide organizations a best-in-class enterprise platform. As an added benefit, SPARC Enterprise M3000, M4000, M5000, M8000, and M9000 servers (Figure 1) also offer improved performance over previous generations of Oracle’s Sun servers, with a clear upgrade path that protects...

Oracle White Paper— SPARC Enterprise M3000, M4000, M5000, M8000, and M9000 Server Architecture SPARC Enterprise M4000, M5000, M8000, and M9000 servers also provide unmatched configuration flexibility. As in other Sun high-end servers, administrators can use Dynamic Domains to physically divide a single SPARC Enterprise M4000, M5000, M8000, or M9000 server into multiple electrically isolated partitions, each running independent instances of Oracle Solaris. Hardware or software failures in one Dynamic Domain do not affect applications running in other domains, unless the failed resource is shared...

Oracle White Paper— SPARC Enterprise M3000, M4000, M5000, M8000, and M9000 Server Architecture STORAGE • Up to four drives • Up to two drives • Up to four drives DYNAMIC DOMAINS One Up to two Up to four 6

Oracle White Paper— SPARC Enterprise M3000, M4000, M5000, M8000, and M9000 Server Architecture TABLE 2. CHARACTERISTICS OF SPARC ENTERPRISE M8000, M9000-32, AND M9000-64 SERVERS SPARC ENTERPRISE SPARC ENTERPRISE SPARC ENTERPRISE M8000 SERVER M9000-32 SERVER M9000-64 SERVER ENCLOSURE One cabinet One cabinet Two cabinets SPARC64 VI • 2.28 GHz with 5 MB L2 Cache • 2.28 GHz with 5 MB L2 cache • 2.28 GHz with 5 MB L2 cache PROCESSORS • 2.4 GHz with 6 MB L2 cache • 2.4 GHz with 6 MB L2 cache • 2.4 GHz with 6 MB L2 cache • Up to 16 dual-core chips • Up to 32 dual-core chips • Up to 64 dual-core chips...

Oracle White Paper— SPARC Enterprise M3000, M4000, M5000, M8000, and M9000 Server Architecture Figure 2. SPARC Enterprise M3000 server enclosure diagram Midrange Systems — SPARC Enterprise M4000 and M5000 Servers SPARC Enterprise M4000 and M5000 servers are economical, high-power compute platforms with enterprise-class features. These midrange servers are designed to reliably carry datacenter workloads that support core business operations. SPARC Enterprise M4000 Server The SPARC Enterprise M4000 server enclosure measures six rack-units (RU) and supports up to four processor chips, 256 GB of...

Oracle White Paper— SPARC Enterprise M3000, M4000, M5000, M8000, and M9000 Server Architecture M5000 server features eight short internal PCI Express and two short internal PCI-X slots, as well as four disk drives, one DVD drive, and an optional DAT tape drive. Four power supplies and four fan units power and cool the SPARC Enterprise M5000 server. Front and rear views of the SPARC Enterprise M5000 server are found in Figure 4. Figure 4. SPARC Enterprise M5000 server enclosure diagram High-End Systems — SPARC Enterprise M8000 and M9000 Servers High-end SPARC Enterprise servers are designed to...

Oracle White Paper— SPARC Enterprise M3000, M4000, M5000, M8000, and M9000 Server Architecture Figure 5. SPARC Enterprise M8000 server enclosure diagram SPARC Enterprise M9000-32 Server The SPARC Enterprise M9000-32 server mounts in an enterprise system cabinet and supports up to eight CMUs and eight IOUs. Fully configured, the SPARC Enterprise M9000-32 server houses 32 processor chips, 2 TB of memory, 64 short internal PCI Express slots, and can be divided into 24 Dynamic Domains. In addition, the SPARC Enterprise M9000-32 server supports up to 32 disk drives, one DVD drive, and an optional...

Oracle White Paper— SPARC Enterprise M3000, M4000, M5000, M8000, and M9000 Server Architecture Figure 6. SPARC Enterprise M9000-32 server enclosure diagram SPARC Enterprise M9000-64 Server An expansion cabinet can be added to an existing base cabinet to create the SPARC Enterprise M900064 server, supporting up to 16 CMUs and 16 IOUs. Fully configured, the SPARC Enterprise M900064 server houses 64 processor chips, 4 TB of memory, 128 short internal PCI Express slots, and can be divided into 24 Dynamic Domains. In addition, the SPARC Enterprise M9000-64 server supports up to 64 disk drives, two...

Oracle White Paper— SPARC Enterprise M3000, M4000, M5000, M8000, and M9000 Server Architecture Figure 7. SPARC Enterprise M9000-64 server enclosure diagram Meeting the Needs of Commercial and Scientific Computing Suiting a wide range of computing environments, SPARC Enterprise M-Series servers provide the availability features needed to support commercial computing workloads along with the raw performance demanded by high performance computing (HPC) (Table 3). TABLE 3. THE POWER AND FLEXIBILITY OF SPARC ENTERPRISE SERVERS BENEFIT A BROAD RANGE OF ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS SPARC ENTERPRISE M3000,...

Oracle White Paper— SPARC Enterprise M3000, M4000, M5000, M8000, and M9000 Server Architecture System Architecture Continually challenged by growing workloads and demands to do more with less, IT organizations realize that meeting processing requirements with fewer, more powerful systems can provide economic advantages. In SPARC Enterprise M3000, M4000, M5000, M8000, and M9000 servers the interconnect, processors, memory subsystem, and I/O subsystem work together to create a scalable, high-performance platform ready to address server consolidation needs. By taking advantage of these servers,...