Sun Enterprise E 10000 Starfire
Photo 1: Tonusamuel, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (Sun Starfire 10000.jpg)
Server, 1997, Sun Microsystems. The Enterprise 10000, nicknamed Starfire, was the largest Sun server of the 1990s, a machine that Sun obtained by buying the business systems division of Cray. It holds up to 64 UltraSPARC II processors and 64 GB of memory in a cabinet the size of a wardrobe, and it can be split into up to 16 independent domains, each running its own copy of Solaris, a feature that made it the standard "big Unix box" of banks, telecom companies and the dot-com era.
| Years | 1997 to 2001 |
|---|---|
| Processors | 16 to 64 x UltraSPARC II at 250 to 466 MHz on 16 system boards |
| RAM | up to 64 GB |
| Storage | external fibre channel and SCSI disk arrays |
| Operating system | Solaris 2.5.1 to 9, with Dynamic System Domains |
| Ports | SBus and PCI I/O boards, Gigabit Ethernet, fibre channel |
| Form factor | cabinet, about 1 ton |
| Price (1997) | from about US$800,000 |
