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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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Breaking News -
Platforms:
3UP Systems Announces First
Ultra-Dense Blade Server
3UP Systems announced its first product family at the Server Blade Summit
2004
in San Jose, Calif. Designed for enterprise-class IT data centers and remote
locations, 3UP Systems' CMS-4U provides reduced cost of ownership and
increased availability through its converged design, advanced future-proof
subsystems, decreased service support costs and smaller rack footprint.
Highest Xeon Processors Per Rack Unit And 4U Form Factor
3UP Systems' CMS-4U chassis is seven inches tall (4U) and supports 12 Intel
dual-Xeon servers. 3UP Systems' CMS-4U offers ultra-dense computing power in a
form factor that is 30 percent to 40 percent smaller than competitive systems,
with up to 240 Xeon processors per rack. The CMS-4U provides high performance
and configuration flexibility in a form factor that meets the needs of data
centers, remote locations, and small and medium enterprises.
Web services, utility computing, .NET, CPU harvesting and distributed
computing are just a few of the technologies that fall under the Grid
computing umbrella. Gt04 -- a premiere enterprise Grid computing conference
targeting industrial and commercial users -- will gather experts, and outline
strategies and road maps for Grid deployment. For more information, visit
www.gt04.com.
Grid computing is here!
Converged Design Philosophy For Greater Control And Value
3UP Systems' CMS-4U converged modular computing system is designed for the
future with the most advanced degree of integration among processing,
switching and storage. While most modular blade systems are server-centric
with additional components sharing resources in the same chassis, 3UP Systems
have taken a more integrated approach.
"3UP Systems has converged and unified management of key subsystems and
brought this design philosophy to a modular system with advanced switching,
greater flexibility in storage options and new features such as iSCSI diskless
boot to provide greater control and significantly decreased total cost of
ownership," explained Harry Quackenboss, the company's president and CEO. "We
are excited about announcing our first product, and leading the industry in
Xeon processors per rack unit."
With 3UP Systems solution, its in-house designed Ethernet switching and
chassis management is the foundation of the architecture for the system. This
is in contrast to other vendors' offerings where the Ethernet switches are
sourced from OEM suppliers and configured as if they were separate boxes.
3UP's architecture is fundamentally better for the emerging world of remotely
managed, dynamically reconfigured systems, where management of servers,
networking and storage are converging.
Enterprise-Class Switching, More External Connectivity, Integrated
Management
3UP Systems designed its integrated redundant switching with gigabit
Ethernet
and 10GE, enterprise-class SNMP, and two to four times the throughput of
competitive blade servers. 3UP's switch supports Layer 2, is field upgradeable
to Layer 3 (Fall '04), and has the capacity to handle increased traffic as
faster server blades models are introduced. 3UP Systems switch is combined
with chassis management, and features integrated redundant IPMI (Intelligent
Platform Management Interface) specification control buses to manage all
active components of the system.
According to Wu-Fu Chen, Acorn Campus founder, and 3UP Systems' chairman,
"having the combined skills of switching, servers and systems management will
be important as servers, networking and storage converge. Because 3UP Systems
developed the integrated Ethernet switch and server management system
in-house, the company is uniquely positioned to evolve the switch and
management control plane to become a true 'server backplane.'"
High Availability Features
3UP Systems' CMS-4U features redundant subsystems and supports no single
active component point of failure for high-availability operation. This
reduces downtime and onsite maintenance requests that require the immediate
attention of the IT staff. "3UP Systems' blade servers are the first to offer
packaging, data storage and networking flexibility suitable for the rigors of
military applications and environments," says Donne Smith, Chief Technology
Officer, Alpha Research and Technology, a leading supplier of ruggedized
systems for mobile and military computing clients.
Reduced Operating Costs Through Advanced Remote Management
Combining the switch with unified subsystem management provides a single
control panel for complete remote management, provisioning and control of the
system. This decreases the time and effort required for IT administrators to
remotely reconfigure software and to isolate and diagnose problems.
Additionally, all hardware FRUs are designed to be replaceable by untrained
personnel without tools, eliminating the need to send out trained technicians
for most system problems and minimizing on-site maintenance requirements.
According to Ric Urrutia, Co-CEO of Taos, a professional IT consulting
services company based in Santa Clara, Calif., "3UP's blade server system
looks ideally suited for the emerging managed professional services industry.
They are taking the concept of remote management and support to a new
level."
Diskless Boot Support for Microsoft and Linux Operating Systems
3UP Systems' CMS-4U supports diskless blades using 3UP Systems'
boot-capable
iSCSI drivers for Microsoft and Linux operating systems. With 3UP Systems'
netboot, servers can be booted from a drive image located on a standard iSCSI
target storage system. By configuring diskless servers and 3UP netboot,
administrators will have additional flexibility in dynamic provisioning and
reconfiguring servers, with improved system availability.
Optional Integrated Application-Aware Switching & Traffic Shaping
3UP Systems CMS-4U provides an optional SLA (Service Level Agreement)
Manager,
which performs load balancing, content switching and traffic shaping optimized
for blade server environments. This allows server pools to be dedicated to
specific applications and network bandwidth to be allocated among users and
applications. It also eliminates the need for expensive separate content
switching and traffic shaping boxes and their respective cabling, support,
spares and expense.
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