Sun is taking aim at blade servers again with the release today of the Sun Blade 6000, a 10U system capable of housing 10 blades based on any combination of Sparc, AMD and Intel processors and running Solaris, Linux and Windows.

The systems use the PCI Express Module to connect blades, support hot-plugging and address problems involved in mixing and matching technologies. They also represent Sun’s first use of Intel chips since the firms announced an agreement in January.

“One of the issues with blades has been the lack of standards in I/O and the way blades fit in the chassis,” said Garry Owen, Sun UK systems practice marketing manager.

“With most blade systems you can have either Intel or AMD but you can’t mix them together. By supporting both plus Sparc you can envisage a system that has Sparc running an Oracle database, Intel Xeon for the Exchange email system and AMD for high-performance computing.”

Systems will initially be available with two-socket, quad-core Intel Xeon processors, two-socket, dual-core AMD Opteron processors and single-socket, eight-core UltraSparc T1 chips.

Service terms will be on a per-chassis basis to simplify administration for Sun and customers. Prices are based on customers having six blades installed in the chassis.

Owen said that the release of the Sun Blade 6000 is effectively the firm’s first attempt to compete in the mainstream blade market as the Blade 8000, announced last July and notable for its huge chassis, was intended for high-end, compute-intensive environments.

“The Blade 8000 has been a bit misunderstood and we probably haven’t done a good job explaining it,” Owen admitted.

Another unusual feature is storage. The Blade 6000 supports up to four hard drives and Sun plans a “storage blade” with even more disk capacity for later this year.

Sun faces a tough task to compete with HP and IBM, the giants that together account for about three-quarters of the blade market. However, the market is still growing with almost 30 percent growth in the last year, according to IDC.