SunFire V100 Server
Welcome to Scott’s SUN SunFire V100 UltraSPARC Server page. I decided, after finding a dearth of information online about getting started with one of these machines, that I would make my own little V100 repository on the web for people looking to get some help with SUN’s most basic UltraSPARC server.
The SunFire V100 is an entry level, 1U, One Way, 64-bit UltraSPARC II RISC server that can use processors up to the UltraSPARC IIi 650MHz. PC133 memory up to 2GB max (512MB x 4 slots of 1.) The V100 can hold either one or two UltraATA 100 (PATA – Parallel ATA) hard drives. Note: Due to legacy IDE controller technology of 28bit addressing the SunFire V100 cannot address hard drive space greater than 137GB. Larger drives will be seen as 137GB drives. This is a hardware limitation and cannot be overcome in software.
The SunFire V100 is an excellent introductory server for someone needing a basic UNIX server and is a great way for learning about SUN hardware and the Solaris operating system. Linux, NetBSD and, of course, Solaris are popular options on the V100 although Solaris must be by far the most popular alternative. Solaris runs natively on this hardware and is available as a free download from SUN.
The V100 is not designed with expansion in mind and therefore has no PCI or other expansion slots. The only available locations for expansion are in the upgrading of the existing hard drive, the addition of a second hard drive and the addition of additional memory. No additional controllers or features may be added. The resulting mainboard (motherboard) is extremely spartan, clean and easy to work with. The chassis is mostly empty and one of the easiest servers you could ever hope to work on.
The only difference between the V100 and its big brother the V120 is in the hard disk subsystem. The V100 uses PATA technology allowing you to install two lower performance legacy IDE hard drives (UltraATA up to 137GB) while the V120 allows you to install two SCSI drives (Ultra2 SCSI 80MB/s.) The V120 also doubles the official memory cap to 4GB. The two servers share a form-factor and chassis. (According to the V100 System Board documents from SUN, the V100 equipped with the UltraSPARC IIi (a.k.a. UltraSPARC IIe+) processors can access up to 4GB of memory while the older UltraSPARC IIe processors are limited to 2GB.)
The SunFire V100 is the update of the popular SUN Netra X1. The SunFire V120 is the update of the SUN Netra T1 AC2000.
If you are new to SUN hardware you might be surprised to find that the V100 does not have ports for a keyboard, mouse or monitor. Accessing the V100′s console can be done through either the Lights Out Management (LOM) or Serial ports. However, these ports use RJ45 connectors instead of traditional serial connectors so a special console cable must be purchased or built.
Overall the V100 is inexpensive when purchased used (it has not been available new for some time), light weight, quiet, relatively “green” with low power consumption and low heat dissipation needs and very easy to work on. It is the perfect machine for many small businesses and UNIX enthusiasts looking for an entry into the enterprise UNIX RISC server market.
Working with the SunFire V100:
- Accessing the SunFire V100 LOM Serial Console
- SunFire V100 PATA Hard Disks
- Building the SunFire V100 from the LOM
- Solaris 10 “Core” Install on the SunFire V100
Resources:
Posted in Tech
September 13th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
[...] Learn more about the SunFire V100 from Scott Alan Miller’s V100 page. [...]
September 13th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
[...] out my SunFire V100 page for everything you ever wanted to know about the SunFire V100 but were afraid to [...]
September 14th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
[...] Since the new hard drives were here it only made sense for me to stay up late and get one of the SunFire V100 servers built tonight so that it could be packed and shipped out to Ohio with us tomorrow so that [...]
September 16th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
[...] (sleep in until seven in the morning!) I had to get up right at seven so that I could pack up the SunFire V100 and load it along with all of our luggage and my CPAP into the BMW so that Dominica and Oreo can [...]
September 16th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
[...] and we ran into my Aunt Gayle as we were heading out to the BMW to pack it up. I transfered the SunFire V100 over to dad and he gave me a pile of my mail to sort through. By the time that we got all of that [...]
September 17th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
[...] you first unbox your “new” SunFire V100 – as the SunFire V100 and V120 have not been made for some time now it is safe to assume that [...]
September 21st, 2007 at 6:01 pm
[...] introduction to SVM I will walk through the process of setting up SVM for the root volume of a SUN SunFire V100 server. This server is equipped with two matched hard drives. In my example the drives are both 160GB [...]
September 22nd, 2007 at 2:03 pm
[...] you have been following along with my series on the SunFire V100 you know that I have installed Solaris 10 Core 8/7 onto it (adding in SSH and BASH packages to make [...]
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:50 am
[...] built a simple NFS file server off of a SUN SunFire V100 server with Solaris 10 Update 4 (8/7) my next task is to share the same directory via Microsoft’s [...]
October 17th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
[...] Solaris 10 on the SunFire V100 UltraSPARC server is very easy and straightforward. However, if you install the “Core” [...]
October 14th, 2010 at 7:47 am
Hi there
I have just purchased a V100 – 548MHZ but states it is an UltraSparc IIe – surely this is a IIi? I think the V120 also in boot states it has a IIe but that surely is not possible (not a IIe+…)
Did you reckon I could stick in 4x1GB sticks and have them fully addressed?
Many thanks!
Ed
October 14th, 2010 at 3:18 pm
Ed, I believe that it is a IIe+ designated as IIi but gets shows as IIe. The speed only matches the IIe+.
If you have the faster/newer procs then yes, in theory you can go to 4GB of RAM. It is not officially supported, however.
October 29th, 2010 at 10:54 am
Jut to confirm.
Bank.
#0 512MB
#1 512MB
#2 1GB
#3 1GB
Managed to get the V100 up to 3gb (had not enough RAM for trying 4GB sure it would be OK though).
However after the upgrade initially was getting MMU errors and a refusal to boot to the disk. However a few reset all and this seems to have clared that problem and now boots fine!
Looks like the Flapjack is going to live for a good while longer
October 29th, 2010 at 1:41 pm
As for OS:
Solaris 10
Flawless Install
Debian 5.0.4 Lenny SPARC
installs OK
Centos 5 SPARC
hangs at Booting Kernel…
Free BSD 8.1 SPARC
installs OK
Open BSD SPARC (v4?)
installs OK
Have not tried the Fedora 12 distribution but believs it is OK as well
Apparently past v7.04 Ubuntu has problems…
November 18th, 2011 at 1:18 pm
Solaris 11 Express also works fine and you can VNC to it.
November 22nd, 2011 at 4:13 pm
Yeah, Solaris 11 didn’t exist yet at the time. I’m told that Solaris 11′s next build will not support this hardware so don’t be surprised if that breaks in the future. Solaris 11′s final release is going to be CoolThreads and the Fujitsu Sparcs exclusively according to my Oracle rep.