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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / AUGUST 11, 2003; VOL. 2 NO. 32
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Breaking News - Platforms:
HP Delivers Faster ProLiant Blade Servers
HP is now shipping faster processor upgrades across its line of HP ProLiant
blade servers, offering customers increased performance and unparalleled
investment protection. The company also introduced the next generation of its
GbE2 Interconnect Switch, which delivers high-performance switching
capabilities for HP ProLiant BL p-Class infrastructures.
The announcements include:
- The second-generation HP ProLiant BL10e blade server has been updated with
a 1-GHz/1M Level 2 cache (400-MHz front side bus) with ULV Pentium M
processor support and PC2100 266-MHz DDR memory support.
- The second-generation HP ProLiant BL20p server has been enhanced to deliver
leading performance in blade servers with a 3.06-GHz/1M processor with a Level
3 cache (533-MHz FSB) with Intel Xeon processor DP support.
- The HP ProLiant BL40p blade server has been upgraded with a 2.8-GHz/2M and
2.0-GHz/1M Level 3 cache (400-MHz FSB) with Xeon processor MP support.
"Blade servers represent the future of traditional server technology, offering
businesses more control and flexibility over their IT systems, ultimately
improving efficiency, lowering cost and improving their ability to manage
change," said Brad Anderson, vice president, HP Industry Standard Servers.
"Blade servers are maturing rapidly and customer adoption is accelerating
faster than many expected. HP was the first major vendor to introduce blade
systems, and today's announcement demonstrates our continued leadership."
The HP ProLiant BL GbE2 Interconnect Switch is supported by a new 24-port
Gigabit switch module designed by Nortel Networks (NYSE, TSX:NT) specifically
for the HP ProLiant BL p-Class blade servers. The switch module is among the
most advanced integrated blade system Ethernet switches available for
customers who demand advanced network functionality and unparalleled
investment protection in a user-friendly design. The advanced, high-speed
switch module allows enterprises, service providers and telecommunications
companies to build a high-performance, secure and scalable infrastructure.
HP ProLiant BL architectures allow rapid deployment, provisioning and re-
provisioning of resources as demands change. Through the systems' built-in
management and virtualization capabilities, businesses can efficiently adjust
to demands and easily add, remove or re-deploy applications to different blade
servers and storage resources.
In recent benchmarks, the faster HP ProLiant blade servers demonstrated
increased performance capabilities without compromise over traditional
designs.
The HP ProLiant BL40p blade server recently posted a Microsoft Exchange
2000 Benchmark result of 13,500 MMB2, making it the first four-processor blade
to achieve this result.(1) The MMB2 benchmark simulates the type of workload
seen by customers as they increasingly rely on messaging services deployed in
today's corporate e-mail environments.
The second-generation HP ProLiant BL10e server showed a peak performance
advantage of 64 percent over its previous generation with the WebBench(TM) 5.0
benchmark from PC Magazine.(2)
In the rapidly growing market for alternatives to rack-mounted systems, HP is
the only major vendor shipping the latest generation 3.06 533-MHz processor
blade technologies and is the only major vendor shipping four-processor blade
servers -- providing customers with the latest in processor technology and
maximum investment protection. HP holds 55 percent market share in IA-32 blade
server revenues in the United States for the first calendar quarter of
2003.(3)
HP has shipped well more than 30,000 blades worldwide, as customers realize
the advantages of installing HP blade servers.
The Greater Baltimore Medical Center (GBMC) recently replaced three full racks
of servers with a single rack of HP ProLiant BL20p blade servers to reduce
operating costs, save valuable data center space and allow for future growth.
"GBMC is planning on using HP blade servers to run all of our mission-critical
applications in the future," said Mike Hebrank, chief information officer,
GBMC. "Blade servers provide us with additional value through their compelling
cost-savings potential."
Additional information about the extensive HP ProLiant blade server portfolio
is available at www.hp.com/go/blades.
About HP
HP delivers vital technology for business and life. The company's solutions
span IT infrastructure, personal computing and access devices, global services
and imaging and printing for consumers, enterprises and small and medium
business. For the last four quarters, HP revenue totaled $70.4 billion. More
information about HP is available at www.hp.com.
(1) The ProLiant BL40p server, using four 2.8-GHz/512-KB L2 cache Intel Xeon
processors and 4 GB of memory, achieved the result of 13,500 MMB2 (users) on
the Exchange 2000 Messaging Benchmark.
(2) The performance investigation between the first and second-generation HP
ProLiant BL10e blade servers used the ecommerce_cgi_win2k script for WebBench
5.0 from Ziff Davis Media, Inc. The second-generation ProLiant BL10e was
configured with a 1-GHz ULV Pentium M, 1,024 MB of PC2100 memory and a single
40-GB ATA/100 hard drive. The benchmark was performed without independent
verification by the VeriTest testing division of Lionbridge Technologies, Inc.
("VeriTest") or Ziff Davis Media Inc. and neither Ziff Davis Media Inc. nor
VeriTest make any representations or warranties as to the result of the test.
(3) Gartner Servers Quarterly Statistics United States--Database, published
May 29, 2003.
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