Sun has released a new series of Opteron servers today, going to a lower cost market with server setups starting under $1000.  The gang at Anandtech has a hands-on-preview of these new machines up today as well.

Another interesting position of Sun’s new direction includes the prospect that end users will probably reconfigure the hardware (particularly the entry level components), as soon as they get them. Even though Sun is happy to provide clients with bleeding edge hardware off the factory floor, during my conferences with Sun, there seemed to be an expectation that end users buying a few of these new SunFires will add a few more sticks of memory, or a PCIe InifiniBand adaptor – particularly on the entry level x64 servers like the one that we saw today. Sun doesn’t seem too upset about this either; the company’s new direction seems very clearly laid out toward selling efficient and innovative technology as a bottom line rather than gouging repeat customers on proprietary hardware.