Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens Computers PRIMEPOWER Enterprise Servers
© 2003 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.
DPRO-97941
17 April 2003
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mainframe-like features, such as instruction retry, into its RISC processors. No other current mainstream
RISC processor offers parity protection on arithmetic processing units and registers. Single-bit errors in
the processor execution units, registers and caches are handled and logged automatically by the
hardware without the operating system and operator intervention that are necessary in other designs.
Other Unix servers, such as the Sun F15K, have dual redundant clocks and backplanes; it’s just that the
PRIMEPOWER 2500 goes that bit further.
RAS features and functions don’t of course guarantee reliability, but should failures occur, the
PRIMEPOWER’s redundancy, deconfiguration/restart and concurrent maintenance capabilities, allied to
the Solaris operating system’s Dynamic Reconfiguration capabilities, will help to minimize both scheduled
and unscheduled downtime. The PRIMEPOWER 2500’s predecessor, the 2000, scored well on Gartner’s
Server Evaluation Model for both planned and unplanned downtime. With its enhancements, the 2500
should do even better.
The PRIMEPOWER 900 and 1500 don’t have quite the same levels of RAS functionality as the 2500—to
some extent, they bask in the glow of the 2500. The 900 and 1500 don’t have the dual redundant
crossbars and dual system clocks, for example, but they nonetheless offer better than average levels of
RAS functionality for midrange and enterprise-level servers. Feedback from Gartner clients in EMEA
suggests that they have been pleased with the reliability of the PRIMEPOWER servers.
Fujitsu’s Armtech workload management software, which is available on all three models, is also rated
above average in Gartner’s Server Evaluation Model.
Viability
The PRIMEPOWER servers have the backing of a large and established systems vendor that isn’t going
to go out of business tomorrow, and the vendor has delivered on the technology with the SPARC64 V
chips and the XA architecture. In addition, the PRIMEPOWER servers are binary compatible with
SPARC/Solaris; Gartner is not aware of any areas of application incompatibility. Clients should note,
however, that Sun does not support the PRIMEPOWER servers in its Sun Cluster or Workload Manager
software. This means that it is not possible to use PRIMEPOWER servers as part of a Sun Cluster. FSC
says that it will support some configurations of Sun servers in its PRIMECLUSTER software, but in
general clients with mixed networks of Sun and Fujitsu servers will have to run either third-party failover
software, such as Veritas, or manage two separate clusters—a Sun Cluster and PRIMECLUSTER.
Similarly, the two vendors have different storage strategies: Sun has its own storage subsystems, storage
management software, SAN strategy, while Fujitsu/FSC’s is built around EMC. The real issue again is
incompatible storage management software and the restriction of its full functionality to each storage
vendor’s proprietary systems. Clients running Sun-based SANs may not find full support for
PRIMEPOWER servers in their storage management software and vice versa.
But the big issue is viability. How committed is Fujitsu to SPARC? And as an ancillary question, how
much influence does Fujitsu have over its operating system, Solaris?
On the first issue, in March 2003, Fujitsu announced roadmaps for SPARC64 that show enhancements to
SPARC64 V in late 2003/early 2004, new dual-core SPARC64-VI processors in the second half of 2004
and SPARC64-VII (up to four cores and 5- to 6GHz) in 2006/07. But will Fujitsu still be prepared to invest
further in subsequent SPARC64 processors if market share remains low compared with the Unix leaders?
Fujitsu certainly isn’t restricting itself to SPARC64 and in January 2003 announced plans to develop high-
end 128-way servers based on Intel processors. That could represent a possible exit strategy and an
interesting challenge for Sun if Fujitsu decided to support Solaris on Itanium. FSC’s original plan for a
follow-on to its Reliant Unix servers was Solaris on Itanium—a plan that was thwarted by Sun’s
