Exploring Galaxy, the new center of Sun's universe

Stick with Unix, and Galaxy starts to twinkle -- but the glow is definitely brighter if you use Solaris rather than the penguin. To make Solaris sexier, Sun is repackaging most of its existing software line in an effort to maximize Galaxy’s usefulness out of the box. Solaris support enables Galaxy users to opt for Sun’s Java Enterprise System platform as well as its storage and network management platforms, all installed out of the box. That’s a real plus for existing Solaris users.

Free IT resource Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) May 22-23, 2007 Sponsored by OSBC Free IT resource TechNet: More ways to know it, share it, and keep it running. Sponsored by Microsoft Sun Galaxy 1 Sun Microsystems, sun.com Beta   Platforms: Sun Galaxy 1 Cost: $7,395 as tested, including 1U rack case, dual-Opteron 275 CPUs, 4GB RAM, dual 73GB SAS drives, DVD drive, and dual power supplies Bottom Line: Sun has delivered a noticeably well-engineered hardware platform that seems primarily aimed at HPTC and grid computing applications using Solaris. A clever case combined with speedy CPUs and the latest in management protocols means this server should do well in most racks. We just wish the box hadn’t been so pre-production. About our Reviews and Scoring Methodology

Houston, we have a problem
Sun’s Solaris emphasis became even more glaringly apparent during testing. Our initial operating system installation went fine, running the default Solaris selection. When we tried to re-gen the machine using its own Red Hat image, though, the box clogged hard. When we tried to return to Solaris, the box refused that OS as well. We tried to find new drivers on Sun’s site, but the machine’s pre-production status apparently meant that Sun didn’t allow access to Galaxy documentation and support images.

We returned to our Red Hat battle, but the only Galaxy-compatible images we could get from Sun were based on a floppy installation -- and our Galaxy 1 didn’t have a floppy. Not to be deterred by anything so trivial, we connected a USB floppy drive, only to be stopped hard when it turned out that the Galaxy’s preproduction motherboard was using out-of-spec USB ports. Worse, all our CD swapping somehow stressed the DVD drive, causing it to stick; again, the result of preproduction plastic on the case.

We did manage to bring Solaris back up on the Galaxy, but this required manual tweaking rather than the bundled preproduction installation CDs. When we had the Galaxy 1 running under Solaris again, we compared a number of common operations against a no-name dual-Opteron white box also running Debian 64-bit -- and the Galaxy was competitively quick in this shoot-from-the-hip, apples-to-oranges comparison. We were especially surprised to see that the Fujitsu 2.5-inch SAS disks were pretty speedy. We’d expected noticeably sub-level disk performance, considering that the Fujitsu disks were only 5,400 rpm, according to Sun’s documentation. The no-name machine was running 10,000 rpm SATA drives.

This problem was cleared up, however, when we took the drives out of the box. It turns out that these were 10,000 rpm SFFSAS (small form factor serial-attached SCSI) drives, and it further turns out that Fujitsu doesn’t even make 5,400 rpm SFFSAS drives. Sun’s documentation writer simply goofed. With all of these preproduction bumps, we simply didn’t feel this Galaxy was up to being benchmarked or graded -- any results simply would have been too questionable.

Sun seems to agree, commenting that all of our lab troubles could be traced back to the unit’s preproduction status. The documentation was still in the works, the Galaxy’s support site was still under construction, and much of the unit’s exterior hardware wasn’t production-grade. We’ll be getting a 2U Galaxy 2 when these units begin shipping, so look for some scores then.

Early bird bugs aside, however, what we’ve seen of Sun’s Galaxy represents a solid platform for datacenter-oriented applications, with a heavy emphasis on Solaris users. Linux users will find initial installation images and full support, but only Solaris users will get the full benefit of Sun’s application library. Couple that with a fairly attractive price tag -- for a datacenter-oriented machine -- and the Galaxy class should do well in that environment.