Cutting edge
Fresh from its acquisition of corporate IT company EDS, PC giant Hewlett Packard is embarking on a virtualisation fest. At the forefront is a new blade server that HP claims is the world's first to be "designed specifically to eliminate performance bottlenecks for virtual server hosting."
The HP ProLiant BL495c virtualisation blades will use AMD Opteron quad-core processors. This represents a much needed CPU win for AMD, which is unable to compete with Intel in the $200+ market and is about to come under further pressure when Intel launches Nehalem/Core i7 later this year. There are a total of 35 systems available from his launch, which are apparently already shipping.
HP and AMD's server people spoke with a common voice on the need for better virtualisation technology. "Businesses continue to face memory and I/O constraints as they implement virtualisation solutions across more mission-critical workloads," said Patrick Patla, GM of the server and workstation business at AMD.
"Customers can lower data center costs with the BL495c by packing more virtual servers into each blade, which extends the useful life cycle of the data center by saving floor space, power and cooling," said Mark Potter, VP and GM of BladeSystem at HP. "Through its balanced architecture of memory, I/O and storage innovations, and by matching the exceptional scalability and efficiency of Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors, the BL495c redefines server blades for virtualisation."
