Sun Microsystems today announced a pair of new four-core Xeon-based boxes that give customers just about the most performance and choice out of any low-end servers from a Tier 1 vendor. The fresh X4450, for example, packs four of Intel's 7300 series Xeon chips into a 2U system. All of the other major vendors require at least 4U for their four-socket units. The system also has a mouth-watering 32 DIMM slots with support for up to 128GB of memory. That should be enough to run your virtualization software.

You can find all the specs here.

Meanwhile, the X4150 arrives as a two-socket, 1U system with Intel's 5300 series quad-core chips. This box makes room for 16 DIMMs and 8 disk drives. You'll find the rest of the specs here.

The X4150 has started shipping at $2,995, and the X4450 will ship next month starting at $8,895.

Sun's press release announcing the new gear proved interesting with the vendor boasting support for Windows and VMware's ESX Server right up there with Solaris and Linux.

Similar versions of these servers fit for AMD's four-core "Barcelona" version of Opteron should arrive shortly as well. ®

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