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eBay buys hundreds of Galaxy servers

Stephen Shankland CNET News

Published: 29 Nov 2005 10:00 GMT

Sun has sold hundreds of its new Galaxy line of x86 servers to eBay to power the auction site's search technology. eBay is using the X4200 and X4100 machines, which use AMD's Opteron processor, as well as Sun StorEdge storage systems, the server and software company said on Monday.

The Galaxy servers can run Sun's Solaris version of Unix as well as the Windows and Linux operating systems, but eBay is using Solaris, Sun said. Sun is expanding into x86 servers such as the Galaxy line, but its mainstay business is for machines using Sparc processors. eBay's PayPal group is evaluating servers using Sun's UltraSparc T1 processor, code-named Niagara. Those systems are expected to be announced next week.