Unisys Corp. released the newest version of its server management software Monday along with new software programs that manage applications on its data centre servers.
Server Sentinel 2.0 will be bundled with the company’s ES7000 servers, which use anywhere from eight to 32 Xeon processors or 32 Itanium processors from Intel Corp. The software is designed to ease the burdens placed on IT managers and system administration through self-management and self-healing features, said Jon Burns, director of Sentinel programs.
For the new version, Unisys expanded the security features of the product, Burns said. It can define system vulnerabilities through maps of unpatched areas and detect intrusions with Okena Inc.’s Stormwatch software, he said.
The software was also developed to detect hardware failures before they happen, and prevent those failures from cascading around a network, Burns said. Server Sentinel will determine in advance of a failure what conditions might lead to a specific problem, and direct traffic on a network to fail over to the “best fit” node based on that specific problem, he said. This allows system administrators to isolate and repair failures without losing the entire network, he said.
Unisys also released a new product Monday called Application Sentinel. Three different varieties of that software will be available, Application Sentinel for Resource Management, for Consolidation, and for SQL Server, Microsoft Corp.’s database software.
Companies will be able to manage the resources they have by applying them to applications as needed, such as during an order spike around the holiday season, Burns said. It will also perform fundamental tasks such as job and batch scheduling, he said.
The consolidation module allows companies to run the same applications on fewer servers by doing an inventory of existing server resources and analyzing how to best distribute the load, Burns said.
The software is available with the purchase of an ES7000 series server, which currently start at about US$100,000 for an eight-way configuration, Burns said. However, Unisys is planning to launch a new ES7000 server over the next few weeks at a much cheaper price, he said. Pricing has not been finalized for the new product.
Application Sentinel is priced on a per processor basis, with each software module such as Application Sentinel for Resource Management priced at about US$1,000 per processor, Burns said. Final pricing for that product is also still in the works. Customers can choose to license any or all of the Application Sentinel modules when purchasing a ES7000 server, he said.
Unisys, based in Blue Bell, Penn., will also make an upgrade version of the software available for current owners of ES7000 or ClearPath servers on CD-ROM.
