Sun outs monster Barcelona box

There were others like Tucana, but the 8S X4600 was the star of the show.

What you are see below is the top of the X4600 with one of the processor 'books' removed. This early version only has four DIMMs per book, but the newer revs have up to eight, allowing for 256GB of DDR2 per chassis.

Why would you want this? Virtualisation of course, and because of that you can get some pretty impressive numbers. Most VMMs can pin processes to a CPU an then to local memory, so with this box you get about 100 per cent scaling from two to four CPUs, and about 350 per cent from two to eight. Not bad.

Amongst other things to notice is tool-free everything. The dual-row fans in front are hot-plug and hand removable, pull one out and the second keeps air flowing. The books are also yankable with the handles, completely hot pluggable as long as you don't mind destroying your machine in a shower of sparks and a cloud of smoke.

You will also notice a handle in the back on the mobo. The board itself has thumb screws to loosen it, and the handle is so you can pull it out easily. Far from necessary, but it is a nice touch.

In addition, this 32 core monster has four hot-swap PSUs and six PCIe 8x slots. You know it was made by one of us because it has NICs labled 0-3, not 1-4. Nice.

The Tucana is a little farther off, but judging from the state of it, not by all that much. It is a 4S server, and the neat thing about it is CPUs two and three are on a carrier with their Ram. It plugs in as a unit, and pulls out easily for servicing. Other than that, it is only a hot-plug-damn-near-everything 4S Barcelona-ready box. µ