The launch of IBM's multiprocessor server at the Cebit show marked
the end of the honeymoon period for Unisys and its 32-way ES7000
server, writes Eric Doyle.
Although the IBM eServer x440 only has a maximum loading of 16
Intel Xeon processors, the company claims that, at $102,494
(£72,000), it will provide strong competition for the ES7000, which
costs about four times that amount for a similar configuration.
However, the Unisys is still the only 64-bit Intel server of this
size that can use Itanium processors in addition to the 32-bit
Pentium III generation of Xeon chips.
The x440 is the first product to challenge Unisys, which has had
more than a year in which the nearest competitor for the Windows
2000 Datacenter Edition market was Compaq's four-way Itanium
server.
Several companies initially planned to rebadge the ES7000 rather
than jump
in early to the Windows
Datacenter market, but Hewlett-Packard and Compaq pulled out last
year and, on the eve of CeBit, Dell also pulled its plans to badge
the system.
The IBM server is designed for flexibility. Like the ES7000, it can
run physical partitions containing four processors each but, like
the z-Server mainframes, it additionally supports virtual
partitions to allow up to 64 servers to be consolidated into one
box. The virtual partitions are created using VMWare's ESX Server
software.
The x440, which will be available in July, uses the
latest Xeon MP processors, and the announcement was timed to
accompany Intel's release of the chips at Cebit. The processor
array is backed by a maximum
memory configuration of 32Gbytes of SDRam.