* Unisys, Sun and Gateway all introduced servers last week
A slew of vendors made server announcements last week to improve their ability to provide the reliability, scalability and performance users need.
Among the announcements:
* Unisys updated its ES7000 Windows-based server line for the midrange market.
* Sun launched two entry-level servers based on its UltraSPARC IIIi processor.
* Gateway rolled out two rack-mounted servers that use the Intel Xeon processor.
The new Unisys ES7000/500 Series servers, built especially for Windows Server 2003, are as low as one-third the cost of comparable Unix servers, according to company claims. They use Unisys’ proprietary Cellular MultiProcessing technology, which allows users to add performance in processor “cells.” Each processor cell is 4U high and contains either four or eight Intel Xeon MP processors on a single motherboard. As many as four cells can be connected into a 32-processor system.
Because of its scalability, the ES7000/500 can handle the mission-critical applications of all sizes of enterprise businesses. Unisys expects users will use the new servers to consolidate their server environments.
Each Unisys ES7000/500 also ships with software called Server Sentinel, which allows the server to heal and manage itself. Server Sentinel includes remote server management tools, cluster verification, as well as predictive fail-over capabilities.
A four-way ES7000/500 starts at $35,000 for four processors. The servers will be available next month.
Sun introduced two low-end servers based on the SPARC processor. The Sun Fire V210 and v240 servers are rack-mounted one- and two-processor servers that run the Solaris Operating Environment.
These servers will compete with Windows-based Intel servers and could be deployed for first-tier Web-enabled applications and technical computing environments.
Each server features four Gigabit Ethernet adapters and an optional Secure Sockets Layer adapter. The servers ship with Solaris 8; the newest Solaris 9 Operating Environment is optional.
An entry-level Sun File V210 is $3,000; a V240 starts at $3,500. Both are expected to ship in May.
Gateway also chipped in last week with two rack-mount servers that use Intel Xeon processors.
The Gateway 955 and 975 are the company’s first rack-mountable servers that contain Xeons. The 955 is a 1U server that can contain two processors running at 3.06 GHz. It has as many as three hot-swappable drives and 128G bytes of RAM.
The Gateway 975 is a 2U server that has redundant power supplies and up to seven hot-swappable hard drives.
