Hewlett-Packard is to unveil new hardware and support for the Linux
operating system, designed to encourage telecoms customers to
switch from Unix to the open source alternative.
Gearing up for the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo this week in New
York, HP will announce two Linux-based "carrier-grade" servers
aimed at telecommunication customers and designed for managing
wireless networks or hosting networks that converge voice and data.
Both conform to the Network Equipment Building Standard (NEBS), a
set of telecommunication industry specifications, said David Snow,
product marketing manager for carrier-grade servers at HP.
The cc2300 server includes two 1.26GHz Pentium III processors,
6Gbytes of RAM, two Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) slots
and the option of an AC or DC power supply. It measures 1.75in high
and 20in deep.
The cc3300 is 3.5in high and features the same hardware as the
smaller version. Additionally, it has two AC or DC power supplies
and six PCI slots. Both use Intel's 32-bit chips and run version
7.1 of Red Hat Linux distribution.
The two servers will go on sale from 1 February, but HP said it has
no customers to announce yet. Spanish telecommunications giant
Telefónica and Nokia have both deployed Linux servers from HP, Snow
said. The transition to the new carrier-grade Linux servers for
them "will be fairly smooth," he said.
Although pricing for the servers was not announced, HP said it has
extended its utility pricing plan to customers who run its Linux
products. The pay-per-use pricing plan was previously available
only for its Unix servers.
In January, HP released a Compact PCI blade server that also offers
NEBS support and runs the Linux operating system. In addition, the
company will take part in an industrywide effort to be announced
later to create a carrier-grade version of Linux, Snow said.
HP is also set to unveil a beefed-up version of the x4000
workstation running Red Hat Version 7.1, aimed at customers
involved in high-end digital content creation. The x4000 runs Intel
Xeon processors at speeds of 1.8GHz, 2.0GHz and 2.2GHz. Dreamworks
SKG, one of its customers using the high-end Linux workstations, is
expected to join HP at its booth at LinuxWorld.
On the services front, HP announced it would begin offering
outsourcing and consulting services for its Linux customers. It
will also offer a standard migration service to move customers from
various operating system platforms to Linux. The date of
availability has not yet been released.
Amazon.com is using HP Linux servers to host its Web infrastructure
and migrated to the platform with HP's help. The Internet retailer
claimed to have saved $17m (£12.1m) by moving to Linux. HP said it
would formalise the migration service provided to Amazon and offer
it to other customers.