Rackable adds 1/4th busload of servers with quad-core Xeons
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(Load based on the average seating of a Greyhound bus) Rackable Systems is willing to cram the Intel 5400 chipset into pretty much any chassis it can get its hands on. Today the server n' storage firm began selling 13 new servers based on Xeon 5000 series quad-core chips.â¦
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Advanced Micro Devices demonstrated its first dual-core microprocessors today using an HP ProLiant DL585 server running four dual-core Opteron chips.
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InfoWorld - Dell Computer re-energized its enterprise-class blade server strategy on Monday, rolling out a new architecture that supports up to 10 servers in a seven-unit chassis that can fit into a standard-size rack.
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Hewlett-Packard has announced four entry-level servers for SMBs, along with updates to its remote management software.The servers are part of HP&#39;s ProLiant 100 series, aimed at companies with 100 to 500 employees. They are all two-processor rack-mount servers, with two 1U machines and two 2U machines. (The 1U refers to the height of the machine and is equal to 1.75 inches.)Rack-mount servers have lost the limelight lately to trendy blade servers, sales of which are growing at a faster clip, and even HP&#39;s vice president of marketing, Paul Gottsegen, who was charged with promoting the new rack-mount servers, advised customers to look closely at blades.&quot;When they see the blades, customers tell us there&#39;s an advantage in cooling, in cabling, in reduced power consumption and overall density, so the rack customers typically transition to blades, it&#39;s just a matter of customers in this market becoming aware of them,&quot; he said.Still, rack-mount servers account for a high proportion of sales despite their slower growth, and smaller companies tend to be more comfortable sticking with what they are used to, said Gordon Haff, principal IT adviser at Illuminata.Two of the HP servers are available now. One is the DL185 G5, a 2U system designed for high-capacity jobs like mail serving and video capture. It comes with up to 14 large-form factor drives and 10.5TB of storage, and it runs on one or two Opteron 2200 processors from AMD. Pricing starts at $1,749.The other machine on sale now is the DL160 G5, a 1U server that can act as a node in a high-performance computing cluster as well as a standard business server. It has two PCI-Express x16 2.0 slots and support for a faster front-side bus, and it runs one or two of Intel&#39;s quad-core 5400 &quot;Harpertown&quot; chips. Pricing starts at $1,399.The other two machines won&#39;t ship for another three months, HP said. They are the DL180, a general-purpose 2U server with three PCI-E slots and up to 12 large form factor drives, and the DL 165, which will be the first rack-mount server that can hold four 3.5-inch disk drives, according to HP. Pricing for those servers was not announced.HP has been doing well in the server market lately. In the third quarter last year, it sold more machines than second-place Dell or third-place IBM, although IBM earned the most revenue, research company Gartner said.Low-end servers are fairly commoditized, and there isn&#39;t a great deal that distinguishes one vendor&#39;s hardware from another, Haff said. &quot;Certainly, there are some differences in areas like management software, but for the most part, it&#39;s about the channels and the partners and what&#39;s offered around the server,&quot; he said.HP announced two Lights-Out management packages for the servers. They allow users to install software remotely and monitor the health of fans, power supplies and other components. A Lights-Out 100i Advanced Pack is $199 per license and a Select Pack is $99. Customers must also buy a Remote Management Card for $219.HP also announced two updated software packages for the machines. They are Citrix Access Essentials, for remote access to applications, and Exchange Server 2007, the latest version of Microsoft&#39;s e-mail server software.
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Rackspace estimated that it already has nearly 300 virtual machines under its management.
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Peter Glaskowsky analyzes the potential benefits of AMD's new quad-core Opteron processors for data centers.
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The Xeon 5355, which packages up two dual-core chips, is being shipped ahead of schedule.
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Web site reveals future plans for Xeon, Pentium 4 processors.
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Feels like the first time IDF Dangle a few thousand customers in front of a vendor, and just about anyone will show up to the Intel Developer Forum. Case in point, longtime Opteron backer Rackable Systems, which graced IDF with its CEO Tom Barton â in the midst of Intel CEO Paul Otellini's keynote no less.â¦
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New initiatives aim to help businesses create server clusters for high-performance computing tasks.
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Fresh gear beats rivals The fresh Xeon-based servers from Sun mark the companyâs most muscular play to date in the x86 realm. The four-socket 2U X4450, in particular, has Sun pushing the equivalent of a midrange SMP down into the heart of the so-called âcommodityâ market. This move plays well with Sunâs historic strengths in the SMP (symmetric multi-processing) arena and supports Sunâs âR&amp;D will winâ mantra.â¦
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IBM's new chip works in 64-processor servers and contains features to let users cap system power consumption.
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(InfoWorld) - Azul Systems Inc., a maker of appliances that enhance the performance of servers running Java software applications, is boosting the performance further with new models introduced Monday. The Vega 2 appliance features up to 768 processor cores, up from a maximum of 384 cores in the Vega 1 appliance introduced in 2005, Azul said. The appliances operate as a sort of a turbocharger for servers. Azul is launching the new product while continuing to defend itself in a patent infringement lawsuit against it by Sun Microsystems Inc. Azul calls its technology "network-attached processing" because, the way it functions, Java-based computer workload is diverted from a database to the Vega appliance for processing before being piped into the server for distribution to end users on the network. "It is able to run through the Java code and give you the responses in the work effort consistently and at a much faster rate than normal servers can do Java," said Cal Braunstein, an analyst with the information technology consulting firm Robert Frances Group Inc. The Azul appliance provides data center managers an order of magnitude increase in computer processing power compared to what's available with the typical array of servers, said Stephen DeWitt, president and chief executive officer of Azul. Data center processing needs to keep growing but for some, new server capacity comes online too slowly. "Right now it's 'Here's a thimbleful, here's a thimbleful, here's a thimbleful','' DeWitt said. "We give you a straw that is attached to an ocean." By offering as many as 768 processor cores, Azul's uses parallel processing rather than faster processors to move data, he said. It's like adding more lanes on the freeway instead of giving everyone a faster car. The 768-processor model, coupled with 768G bytes of memory, is at the high end of the Vega 2 line and will be shipped beginning in 2007, said Scott Sellers, chief operating officer and a cofounder of Azul. An entry-level Vega 2 with up to 192 processors and multiple memory configurations is available now in the Americas and Europe. Prices in the new series start at US$49,995. The maximum capacity Vega 1, introduced 18 months ago, featured 384-way processors and 256G bytes of memory, Sellers said. Azul has been engaged in a legal dispute with Sun Microsystems since last March when Azul sought an injunction in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to block Sun from suing Azul for patent infringement. Sun filed a suit anyway in May, alleging patent infringement and abuse of trade secrets. Sun claims Azul is using Sun-patented "speculative locking" and transactional memory technology in Azul products, according to the lawsuit. It also says Azul hired 10 former Sun executives, including DeWitt, while they were still bound by a noncompete contract clause by Sun. Analyst Braunstein doesn't think the suit poses a real threat to Azul: "I don't think there's a smoking gun at the moment." Attorneys for Sun did not return calls seeking comment.ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.
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(InfoWorld) - Server makers are showing their first systems based on Advanced Micro Devices'Â upcoming quad-core Opteron chip, known as Barcelona. Barcelona servers from Supermicro Computer, Tyan Computer, and Uniwide TechnologiesÂ are on show at Taipei's annual Computex exhibition, which started Tuesday. The appearance of the chips, which are scheduled to ship later this year, signals they are getting closer to the market. Detailed specifications of the chips and servers on display were not immediately available. AMD is counting on Barcelona to boost its sales, and market share, in the face ofÂ heated competition from rival Intel. Barcelona, which is manufactured using a 65-nanometer process, contains four processor cores on a single piece of silicon. By comparison, Intel's quad-core chips use two pieces of silicon, each containing two cores, strapped together inside a single package. AMD claims its design gives Barcelona a significant boost in performance -- as much as 50 percent to 80 percent -- over its current Opteron chips. Uniwide and Supermicro are showing Barcelona systems that take advantage of a power-saving feature of the chip. Called Dual Dynamic Power Management, this allows the processor cores and on-chip memory controller to draw power separately, which AMD said allows better performance and power management. AMD also promised an easy upgrade path for existing Opteron customers. Motherboards that support current Opteron chips can be upgraded for the quad-core chips by updating the BIOS. Dual-core chips can then be swapped for quad-core Barcelona processors, which use the same chipsets and processor sockets. Tyan and Asustek ComputerÂ are among the companies making upgradeable motherboards.
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Superfast servers with Intel's new quad-core Xeon 5300 processor coming in January.
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Improvements include new chips, support for a fourth operating system and new options for running multiple jobs on the same machine.
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Dell has teamed up with cluster-management app-maker Platform Computing Inc. to create a small but powerful rack-mounted server complete with open-source cluster-management tools.