* HP comes out with servers based on AMD Opteron processors
HP did the expected last week – it introduced a portfolio of AMD Opteron-based servers.
HP’s Opterons are perhaps the broadest in the industry. The company introduced four servers – three dual-processor ProLiant DL 145’s and a quad-processor DL 585.
Sun, by contrast, also recently introduced a dual-processor v20z, which uses the x86-64 bit technology from AMD. IBM has a dual-processor Opteron-based server, the e325, which is designed for high-performance technical computing (HPTC) clusters.
“AMD seems to have gained traction in custom applications that run on Linux, especially for the financial services market, as well as HPTC,” says Jamie Gruener senior analyst with the Yankee Group.
HP’s ProLiant DL 145 is available in three models: one that operates at 2.2 GHz, another that runs at 1.8 GHz and a third that runs at 1.6 GHz. Each has as much as 16G bytes of memory, internal 40G-byte ATA drives and dual-ported Gigabit Ethernet adapters. HP says the servers are intended for Web, caching or load-balancing, as well as general file and print server duty. All these servers are available now starting at $1,600.
The DL 585 is for the high-end market. It is a quad-processor server with as much as 64G bytes of memory and four internal drives. It is four times as high as the DL 145, at 4U. The DL 585, HP says, is for running applications that require high performance – applications such as transaction-intensive databases, CRM, or ERP.
“In many cases AMD platforms today have the edge on Intel Xeons for performance,” Gruener says. “So for customers that want additional performance, AMD is a solid offering.”
The DL 585 is expected to be available in the second quarter of this year. It has not been priced yet.
HP will fit its Opteron servers at the low and high end of its ProLiant line. The ProLiant DL 140, which uses an Intel Xeon DP processor, is the smallest of HP’s servers; the DL 740, which can be configured with as many as eight Xeon processors is the largest ProLiant HP has. The new DL 145 is the next step up from the 140; the DL 585 is the second-largest ProLiant server.
Further, HP expects to ship in the second half of the year a dual-processor ProLiant blade server that uses the Opteron processor.
