Sun has announced that it has been awarded a 5-year (plus three option years) contract to provide data center processing capacity (using the Solaris operating system) to the Department of Defense Information Systems Agency.

Under this contract, Sun will deploy Sun Utility Computing and Capacity Management solutions to DISA’s 18 data centers to provide application-ready Solaris OS processing capacity. Sun’s service will provide server capacity capable of handling all of the multiple types of Solaris application workloads DISA processes, including logistics, finance, and command and control applications. Sun Cluster business continuity software will be used to provide automatic application failover when required. The service will include Sun’s comprehensive Sun N1 System Manager suite of management, deployment, measurement and monitoring tools to ensure responsive performance and deployment of new workloads. In addition, Sun’s unique Solaris Containers technology introduced in Solaris 10 will enable DISA to virtualize its workload, resulting in vastly improved utilization and reduced management costs.

Sun will install Sun owned hardware in DISA data centers to provide this service to support both classified and unclassified network requirements. Sun will incorporate both SPARC and AMD Opteron architecture-based server systems in the service it provides. The service will accommodate the wide variety of computing environments that exist at DISA, ranging from small Web servers to large enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. With Sun’s service DISA data centers will be better prepared for future needs including Net-Enabled Command Capability and Net-Centric Enterprise Services-based applications as well as other DOD network-centric systems.