Sun Cites Momentum for its Grid Utility Computing

Since announcing its Grid utility computing initiative in February, Sun Microsystems has activated regional Sun Grid Centers in Virginia, New Jersey, and London, with customers from the financial and education sectors. Additional facilities are planned.


Sun said several high profile banks and ntertainment companies have completed extensive testing for Sun Grid. Sun has also launched a "sneak peek program," an early access program for pre-qualified Sun customers to test their applications for compatibility and performance on the Sun Grid.


Sun's new utility offerings include the Sun Grid compute utility and the Sun Grid storage utility. The Sun Grid compute utility -- provides customers with fully virtualized CPU memory and high-performance storage connected through a secure networked grid, at a price of $1/cpu-hr. Customers can use it for jobs such as Monte Carlo simulations, protein modeling, reservoir simulations, mechanical CAD simulations and similar non-transactional workloads. The Sun Grid compute utility will deliver a standard computing grid, powered by AMD Opteron processor-based systems, Solaris 10 OS and N1 Grid Engine, to help provide customers optimal performance, functionality and security. The Sun Grid storage utility -- supports customers' grid jobs at a price of $1/GB-mo or can be used independent of the compute utility.
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