Sun Servers

Sun V100 1 x 500Mhz Processor, 1GB Memory, 2 x 40Gb HDD $ 1,270
Sun V120 1 x 550Mhz Processor, 1GB Memory, 2 x 36Gb HDD $ 1,460
Sun V210 1 x 1Ghz Processor, 1GB Memory, 2 x 36Gb HDD $ 2,870
Sun V240 2 x 1Ghz Processor, 2GB Memory, 2 x 36Gb HDD $ 2,790
Sun V440 4 x 1.062Ghz Processor, 8GB Memory, 2 x 73Gb HDD $13,240
Sun V880 8 x 750Mhz Processor, 8GB Memory, 6 x 73Gb HDD $ 6,490

Sun Storage

Sun 3510 Disk Chassis with 2 x 146GB HDD and 2 controllers $ 9,790
Sun 3310 JBOD with 12 x 36GB HDD $ 6,230

In line with that, Sun Microsystems undertook a survey of their customers during the middle of this year to get an idea of how green the Sun community really is.

Here are some interesting statistics from the Sun customers surveyed:

Measurement of carbon emissions

• 22% have practices in place to enable the measurement of carbon emissions
• 36% have no practices in place but are interested in evaluating them
• 33% have no plans to measure carbon emissions

Annual power costs

• 44% spend more than $1 million on power annually
• 8% spend between $750k and $1 million on power annually
• 7% spend between $500k and $750k million on power annually
• 15% spend between $100k and $500k on power annually
• 26% spend less than $100k on power annually

Greening the IT department

• 38% have dedicated green IT plans in place
• 23% plan to deploy eco responsible technology in the next 12 months
• 21% are evaluating putting green IT plans in place
• 15% have no plans at all

Drivers for uptake of green technology

• Reduced power consumption – 78%
• Lower costs – 73%
• Lower carbon emissions and environmental impact (eg recycling) – 61%
• Improved systems performance and utilisation – 50%

Strategies that would help green the IT department

• Energy efficient technologies – 73%
• Systems virtualisation – 66%
• Power and cooling solutions – 59%
• Data centre consolidation – 48%

The message that we’re all hearing now is that greening our IT departments is becoming a major priority for most organisations. If you would like more information about how Sun hardware can help you to meet your greener future, we have plenty of information that can help! Call us on 1800 777 111 or email us directly.

We’ve got a range of machines including V100‘s, V120‘s, V210‘s and V240‘s that represent not only a quick and easy solution to that extra server you might need - but they’re also very competitively priced right now.

With a wide range of processors, memory and drives that can fit into these machines we can mix and match them to suit your specific requirements. Contact us to arrange your cheap Sun equipment purchase.

With their innovation and black box data centre, Sun hardware can assist a business in lowering their greenhouse emissions while increasing computing and storage growth.

This has been done with the Sun, Fire and CoolThreads technology which consume one third less energy than previous hardware

They take up half the space with double the performance.

The T2000′s have come onto the broker market with 1.2GHz and 1.0GHz 8 core threading these machines which is an improvement in any data centre. If you are looking for a web server that can blast through a heavy work load, take a look at Sun’s CoolThreads. And call us on 1800 777 111.

Sun Servers

• Sun V490 4 x 1.35Ghz Processors, 32GB Memory, 2 x 73GB HDD,
  2 x 2GB Dual FC Host Adapters $32,000
• Sun V880 8 x 750Mhz Processors, 8GB Memory, 6 x 73GB HDD,
  2 x Gigabit Network Adapters $6,500
• Sun V210 1 x 1Ghz Processor, 1GB Memory, 2 x 36GB HDD
  $2,950

Sun Arrays

• Sun 3510 12 x 146GB HDD $9,790

This month, we added our newsletter from July 2006. Even though these articles are 2 years old, there is still quite a lot of information that is just as relevant as ever.

Highlights of July 2006

• 15 Point Checklist To Keep Your IT House In Order
• Important Dates For IBM OS/400 V4 And V5 Support
• How We Prepare Your IBM iSeries For Delivery To You
• Issues When Upgrading From System 36 Mode To OS/400
• *noMAX sentry Saving Your Orphan Data
• Checking And Resetting Battery Age On Sun StorEdge Arrays
• Comparing IBM System i And System p
• Restriction Of Hazardous Substances (RoHS)
• You’ll Get Genuine Manufacturers Parts In Your Refurbished Equipment
• Keeping Up With IBM Server Brands

And don’t forget, you can check out our past and present newsletters on the Archive page.

• IBM System i has been a great part of our business, but these days we are also seeing lots of BladeCenter services coming through.
• We have installed IBM System i, System p, System x, BladeCenter, HMC and Sun hardware, as well as OS installs and upgrades on these machines.
• We have performed health checks on hardware, OS, cumulative patches and peripherals.
• We have trained customers in the use of Query400, and have assisted them with setting up basic admin tasks such as TCP/IP, and also in programming using RPG, and CL languages.
• Being a certified installer, we have implemented the *noMAX High Availability software for some customers.
• Logical Partitioning (LPARs) is another of our specialties.

We would like to thank our customers who have used our services

And if you haven’t already done so, please give us a go at assisting you. For further enquiries don’t hesitate to contact your Computer Merchants Sales Rep on 1800 777 111.

As many of you would have already seen, Computer Merchants have introduced monthly specials across IBM, HP and Sun hardware.

These specials are unique to Computer Merchants as we are dedicated to working with our suppliers to provide specials meeting your requirements and budgetary needs.

Timely And Flexible

These specials are timely hot offers, however we can be flexible as we have the ability to make minor alterations to the configuration to suit your individual requirements.

Our previous IBM xSeries, BladeCentre and Storage Specials have proven to be extremely successful with many of you taking up on the opportunity to complete those necessary upgrades or even making some additions to your existing infrastructure.

Specials Links

• Current Specials – these change monthly
• Historical List of Specials

Call your Computer Merchants Sales Representative on 1800 777 111 for more details.

Interactive is on the ball. They are encouraging customers to upgrade the firmware levels on all their arrays within this family even before something goes wrong. They also encourage customers to talk to them before attempting this upgrade, as it is not a trivial exercise if the upgrade is from 3.x to 4.x. What should be a straight forward disk failure can look much worse if the array is running the older firmware.

Another potential problem is some early life failures particular to models of 36GB and 72GB Seagate disks. A new feature was added to the later disk firmware to detect and warn the administrator of the pending failure due to this issue.

Call your Computer Merchants rep for more information – 1800 777 111

What Sun questions do you have?

Tell me what you want to read… or if you have news you want to share! If there is anything you want to see on the Sun tech talk page, let us know using the form below, or email me.

We are currently looking to replenish stock, stock that has been moving out of the warehouse over the last 6 months. While it’s great that we’ve moved so much Sun stock and managed to keep so many of you happy, we’ve now found that our current stock is low.

We’re particularly interested in any of the current V series machines or any of the 3000 series arrays. In fact if you’ve got any Sun equipment at all please let us know! Call us on 1800 777 111.

Sun Servers

Sun Fire V210 Server with: 2 X 1GHz, 2GB RAM, 2 X 36GB HDD $ 3,450
Sun Fire V440 Server with: 2 X 1.06GHz, 4GB RAM, 4 X 36GB HDD $12,730
Sun Fire V490 Server with: 4 x 1.35GHz, 32GB RAM, 2 x 73GB HDD
 - 2 x 2GB dual FC Host Adapters $39,500
Sun Fire V880 Server with: 4 X 750MHz CPU, 8GB RAM
 - 6 X 73GB FC HDD 2 X GB Network Adaptors $ 7,900

Sun Disk Arrays

Sun StorEdge 3310 SCSI Array12 x 146GB HDD + 1 raid controller $10,440
Sun StorEdge 3510 FC Array12 x 146GB HDD $12,970

They offer 3 major advantages over other applications on the market:

• Strong Integrated Customer Relationship Management
• Mobile solutions for field staff remote access
• Single integrated database approach aimed at the mid-range market

Do You Have Mobile Staff?

HansaWorld’s products work with hand-held devices that communicate immediately with your server back at head-office. So if you have mobile sales people, they can view and update customer details, respond to requests or take orders while they are on the road visiting customers, rather than having to update details back at the office. This positively affects their efficiency and the level of customer service you can offer your customers.

These benefits also apply to a fleet of delivery trucks and any service companies who have field staff travelling from job to job.

A leading manufacturer and distributor selected HansaWorld in 2007 to reduce the number of independent systems to run their business.

Since going live with HansaWorld, they have experienced benefits such as the following:

• An integrated system that provides key information to all departments in the business.
• Remote and mobile device access so senior management can log into their system and view key performance indicators, in real-time, from anywhere.
• Increased efficiency due to no duplication or double-handling of data in different systems.

Other industries that are a good fit for HansaWorld are:

• Clothing -HansaWorld handles style / colour / size
• Time billing -such as professional services like accounting and legal firms
• Retail -point of sales that directly updates stock, accounts and CRM real-time

HansaWorld is supported locally in Australia and runs on a number of platforms, including: IBM System i, p, x, Sun Solaris, Linux, Windows Vista / XP / 2003 / 2000 / Mobile 5.0 / Pocket PC 2003.

Our engineer Richard recently had the pleasure of travelling to Papua New Guinea to work with the great people from Bank South Pacific at their Port Moresby office. Richard was responsible for the installation and set-up of their new i570 Power 6+ System i, with 2 Frames, 5 LPARs and over 5 TB of storage. . . It was a LARGE and COMPLEX Project!

The whole project went very smoothly, and without a hitch. The reason we experienced NO pain is because all the work was done inhouse, prior to Richard going over to PNG. The equipment was built and configured at our premises, and then we prepared the system for installation of the 5 partitions.

This included installing OS/400 and CUME five times (5 partitions requires 5 installs) and the latest version of HMC. The disk systems were configured with both RAID and mirroring.

Once the system was completed and staged, it was completely dismantled and split down to individual assemblies. For example, each 0595 expansion unit (there were 8 of them) was:

• removed from their rack,
• labelled,
• photographed,
• individually wrapped and
• packed into tailor made shipping crates lined with a 20mm layer of poly-foam.

Our Warehouse Manager and his team have over 35 years experience in freight

So it is of no surprise that the equipment arrived in PNG exactly how it left our warehouse. All up it was a substantial consignment of nearly 2 tonnes.

Our production department here at Computer Merchants have the skill and expertise in not only engineering your new System i, System p, Sun or other systems. We have the facilities, and the people to build your system and send it to the other side of the world, with the confidence that all that will be required is for you or us to re-assemble it and turn it on.

Please feel free to contact your rep and discuss any potential services needs you have that Computer Merchants might be able to assist with.

Our best advice is to have a technical professional undertake the installation, which will minimise downtime and any potential data loss.

On your Sun servers, check your firmware levels too. From the Sun website, download your latest revision, all you need is a quick reboot and you’re done.

Call us on 1800 777 111 for more information.

Solaris 10 is free, and provided your applications can be supported, you may find that you also save some of your valuable IT budget.

Call your sales person at Computer Merchants on 1800 777 111 and we’ll point you in the right direction.

With Solaris Volume Manager (SVM), a lot of people are replacing disks and skipping the correct procedures because they’re not aware of them, and this is leading to problems at a later time.

When you replace a disk, you really need to be aware of the following new command: #metadevadm

For a quick summary of this command, type:

#man metadevadm

If you’re still not sure what to do please give us a call on 1800 777 111 and we’ll be happy to point you in the right direction.

Everyone on the street is talking about the new Sun X4100 and Sun X4200 servers. They take a fraction of the time to install, they’re very fast, and with Solaris 10 free to download, you can have your server up and running in no time.

We’re also stocking some of the larger Sun Fire servers at the moment which are great value for money.

Talk to your Computer Merchants rep for the latest Sun servers on the broker market.

Bruce started with the company in 1998 to develop the open systems market. Our open systems team now consists of 7 sales specialists, focussing on:

• IBM System p (RS/6000),
• IBM System x (x86/Intel),
• IBM mainframe,
• as well as Sun and HP products.

Both Carl and Jas recently achieved 5 years of service at Computer Merchants

“I still feel like a ‘newby’ at Computer Merchants, given the depth of experience around me…”
said Carl.

And this may well be the case with the average tenure of current sales staff being over 7 years. If you want to work with a company that looks after its staff and want to benefit from an experienced sales team, then give the Computer Merchants team a go!

And well done Bruce, Carl and Jas!

Complete Sun Servers

Sun SunFire V100 w/ 500MHZ CPU 256GB Ram, 2 x 40 GB HDD, CD ROM $1,570
Sun SunFire 280R, w/ 2 x 1.2MHZ CPU, 2GB, 2 x 73GB HDD, DVD ROM $1,990
Sun SunFire 280 R, w/ 2 x 900MHZ CPU, 4GB, 2 x 36GB HDD, DVD ROM $2,590
Sun V240 w/ 2 x 1GHZ CPU, 4GB, 4x 36GB HDD, DVD ROM $3,400
Sun V440 w/ 2 x 1.5GHZ CPU, 8GB, 4 x 73GB HDD, DVD ROM $12,730
Sun V490 w/ 4 x 1.35GHZ CPU, 32GB, 2 x 73GB HDD, 2 x 2GB Dual FC host adaptors $40,000
Sun V880 w/ 4 x 750MHZ CPU, 8GB, 6 x 73GB HDD, 6 x 36GB HDD, 2 x GB Network Adaptor $7,980

Sun Storage

Sun w/ 1 x DLT8000 drive $2,950
Sun L25 w/ 2 x Quantum LTO1 drives $6,590
Sun A5200 w/ 18 x 73GB 10k HDD $4,580

We are currently looking to replenish stock that has been moving out of the warehouse over the last 6 months. While it’s great that we’ve moved so much Sun stock and managed to keep many of you happy we’ve now found that our current stock is low.

We’re particularly interested in any of the current V series machines or any of the 3000 series arrays.

In fact if you have ANY Sun equipment at all, please let us know.