Blade shootout at Infoworld

There is yet another really positive review at Infoworld: Blade server shootout: Dell vs. HP vs. Sun

The Sun Blade 8000’s hardware fits a virtualization build-out plan like a glove. Available I/O options are far better than the other blade systems, and the four sockets per blade, the NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access) inherent in the AMD Opteron technology, and maximum RAM supported all make virtualization a foregone conclusion. As a VMware engineer speculated during testing the week after the blade server tests, “Wow … at standard loads with quad-core CPUs, this thing could support 600 virtual machines all by itself.” Enough said.

And in the conclusion:

Sun’s system is more of a consolidated server structure than true blades. Each server module offers a four-socket Opteron mainboard with up to 64GB of RAM, and Sun fits 10 modules into a 19U chassis that’s just bursting with I/O options. Its surprisingly poor performance in the lab is likely due to poor optimization on the SPEChpc tests. Either way, it cost Sun on the final score -- but the blades are impressively powerful, and a great match for a virtualization infrastructure.