The Sun Storage 7110 Unified Storage System makes it easier than ever to simplify your storage for less. The easy-to-use appliance is ideal for enterprise workgroups, remote offices or SMBs, and offers enterprise storage at entry-level prices.
We could have chosen to read the commercial description from Sun Microsystems only, but in order to advise our customers better, we chose to test it ourselves via the program 'try&buy' (60 days). After 15 days of experimentation, we started to write our impressions in this review.
2.1 In the boxes
The server is delivered in a box of more than 30kg, containing :
- a system installation guide (40 pages). Clear and simlpe, the documentation ends with the section on the connection to the administration interface
- a small 'book' of 200 pages of licenses !
- safety and registration documentation
- a single page documentation redirecting you to http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/prod/stor.7110#hic and to https://ip_server:81. The second address being wrong, you will have to use https://ip_server:215/wiki
- 4 6-meter Ethernet cables
- 1 RJ45 - DB9 adapter (for configuration via serial port)
- a rackmount kit
2.2 The Sun Storage 7110 Unified Storage
The design of the server is sober but neat, it will poke your curiosity. Metal is omnipresent. Solidity is an other leitmotiv of the manufacturer.
Medium sized:
- Height: 87.85mm (3.46in)
- Width: 425.5mm (16.75 in.)
- Depth: 711.2mm (28 in.)
- Weight: 28.6kg (63lbs) (2U),
It will perfectly fit in a 24" bay.
Our model is equipped with 16 146 GB 2"1/2 SAS 10 000rpms hard drives, 8 GB of main memory, a 4 core Opteron processor running at 1.9GHz and 5 10/100/1000 ethernet ports (one is dedicated to administration, see ILOM).
In front, the 16 disks placed in their metal rack share the panel with 2 USB ports (hiding a case for a slim CD reader), indicators and a power button.
The hard drives are ventilated by 12 small hot-swappable ventilators. These ventilators are also responsible of heat evacuation of the fanless processor(s). The number of decibels is surely an important element of hardware choices, the fans are very noisy but the hard drives are ultra silencious.
The server uses 2 redundant, hot-swappable, 1050W power supplies. The power supplies are also noisy, their ventilators start when plugged and when server is stopped or not.
Noise and fans
But inside...
