Hewlett-Packard Co. is announcing five new servers, including a new blade server and a new rack server, along with two new storage products aimed at the entry-level storage area network (SAN) market.
The five new HP ProLiant servers utilize Intel Corp.’s 64-bit Nocona processor with Xeon extended memory 64-bit technology (EM64T). The new servers also include enhanced management, availability, and ease of use features, according to HP officials. Prices for the new systems start at US$1,529 for the HP ProLiant ML350 server with two Intel Xeon processors running at 3.0GHz with 800MHz front side bus, EM64T technology, and 512MB memory. HP is also shipping a ML370 with a similar configuration, but with two 3.4GHz Xeon processors. That system starts at US$2,899.
At the high end of the announcement, the HP ProLiant DL380 rack server is priced starting at US$3,449 for a system with two Intel Xeon processors running at 3.4GHz with 800MHz front side bus, EM64T, and 1GB memory in a 3.5-inch form factor. The rack server is designed for space-constrained corporate data centres and service providers.
HP’s new blade server, the HP ProLiant BL20p, comes with two Intel Xeon processors running at 3.2GHz with 800MHz front side bus, EM64T, and 1GB memory. That system will not be available until Sept. 1, and pricing for that model has not been determined, said HP officials.
HP’s server announcement demonstrates the company’s continued competitiveness in the server market, said David Reine, director of enterprise systems for The Clipper Group. “Hewlett-Packard has put together a set of ProLiant and Integrity platforms based upon the widest commodity offerings in the market: Intel’s newest 32/64-bit Xeon 64EM, Intel’s dual-core 64-bit Itanium-2 technology, and AMD’s 32/64-bit Opteron technology,” said Reine.
The company also announced that is has a big customer lined up for its HP ProLiant servers: Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M. Sandia Labs is a government-funded laboratory that focuses on high-level research and development projects. Sandia recently purchased 1,280 EM64T-based ProLiant DL360 servers for high-performance technical computing applications. The system is expected to exceed 1 6 teraflops, according to Sandia officials.
“After experiencing firsthand how we could successfully cluster Linux-based ProLiant servers, our focus evolved to exploiting the new Xeon’s 64-bit extensions to innovate new technical applications,” said John Zepper, manager of infrastructure computing systems at Sandia Labs. The laboratory is working with HP Services to build a supercomputer based on Intel Xeon EM64T-based HP ProLiant servers.
The company’s new storage array offerings are designed for IT managers looking for an entry-level SAN. The HP StorageWorks Modular Smart Array (MSA) 1500 is a Fibre Channel SAN attached controller shelf that connects to HP StorageWorks Serial ATA and/or SCSI disk enclosures. IT offers as many as eight attached SATA enclosures and delivers as much as 24TB of storage capacity. Pricing for the system starts at US$8,995.
The storage group also announced the MSA20, a SATA disk drive storage enclosure with Ultra320 SCSI host connectivity that has a starting price of US$2,959. By integrating low-cost SATA hard drives and enclosures with existing SCSI drives enclosures, HP is helping customers protecting their existing hardware investment, said Kyle Sitze, director of marketing for online storage at HP. “This is a significant advancement for entry-level SAN solutions. It can really lower the cost of entry for SANs,” he said.
