Sun, Fujitsu and Hitachi freshen server lines

IDG News Service - Sun Microsystems Inc. and Fujitsu Ltd. are introducing new servers Tuesday that they jointly developed, while another server maker, Hitachi Ltd., is unveiling new blade servers. They each aim to address buyers' dual needs for computing power and energy efficiency.

Sun and Fujitsu, which have jointly developed and marketed products for about 20 years, introduced six new servers: the T1000 and T2000 entry-level servers that run on the Sun-designed UltraSparc T1 processor; the midrange M4000 and M5000; and the high-end M8000 and M9000, all powered by Fujitsu's Sparc 64 VI processor. The new servers will be offered under the Sun, Fujitsu and Fujitsu-Siemens brands. Fujitsu has a separate joint venture agreement with Siemens AG.

The entry-level models feature two quad-core processors, 64GB of random access memory and can run up to 32 virtual machines in one physical machine. The midrange models feature up to 64 dual-core sockets, processor speeds of up to 1.4 GHz, and up to 2TB of memory. The high-end servers offer 32 or 64 cores depending on the model, processing speeds of up to 2.4 GHz, and up to 2TB of memory.

The servers are available with Sun's Solaris 10 operating system. Sun guarantees that software programs designed to run on Solaris 8 or Solaris 9 will work on a Solaris 10 machine.

The new Sun and Fujitsu introductions seem to be "an installed base play" rather than a bid for new customers, said Vernon Turner, group vice president and general manager of enterprise computing at IDC.

"For some customers, this is a way of saying 'We love Sparc, but what we want is something that is competitive in terms of performance and probably price as well,'" said Turner.

For its part, Hitachi is following up its BladeSymphony 1000, introduced in November 2006. The new BladeSymphony 320 differs from the 1000 in that it includes only a choice of Intel Corp.'s Xeon dual-core or quad-core processors, not Intel's Itanium processor.

The 320 is also available with a 110-volt power option, which means the server can run simply by plugging it into a standard U.S. electrical outlet.

"They don't need the raised floor design or an air conditioning system of a data center," said Steve Campbell, vice president of marketing in the server systems group of Hitachi America Ltd.

The 320 is aimed at small to medium-size businesses that likely don't have a huge data center but still have enough rack servers that they might want to upgrade to more compact blade servers to consolidate the number ofservers, save room and the cut energy usage, said Campbell.

Hitachi's server sales trail those of high-volume vendors such as Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM and Dell Inc., said IDC's Turner, so selling a server that can plug into an electrical outlet is a way for Hitachi to get noticed.

"It think it's something that they have looked at and said, 'How can we differentiate ourselves on engineering as much as possible?'" said Turner.

The company hasn't officially announced pricing for the 320, but Campbell estimated it would start at $10,000.

Reprinted with permission from

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