On-Demand Enterprise: Hitachi Unveils Blade Server with Hardware Virtualization

Real-time computing. Real-time news.

On-Demand Enterprise >> Off the Wire

December 04, 2006

Hitachi Unveils Blade Server with Hardware Virtualization

Hitachi America Ltd. has announced BladeSymphony with Virtage, a blade server to provide users with enterprise-class data center functionality. The new product, the latest member of Hitachi BladeSymphony series, includes Virtage, an embedded virtualization feature. The feature, which builds virtualization into a blade server's hardware, provides customers an alternative to third-party software solutions and thus can enable them to decrease overhead costs while increasing manageability and performance.

BladeSymphony with Virtage also includes blade symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) interconnect technology that is designed to improve scalability by enabling users to configure multiple blades, so that they work as a single system. BladeSymphony with Virtage will be generally available in North America in January and has been selected by several customers, including Stanford University's Cardiovascular Biomechanics Research Laboratory (CBRL).

"BladeSymphony with Virtage is a leap ahead in the virtualization game," said Vernon Turner, group vice president and general manager of Enterprise Computing at IDC. "This technology will further fuel the significant growth of the blade market, as IDC has projected. Embedded virtualization, coupled with BladeSymphony's mix-and-match capabilities that allow users to work with Intel Xeon processor- and Itanium processor-powered blades in the same chassis, will give end users an expanded variety of options as they design their enterprise-class environment."

"As CBRL's procedures require such intensive computing needs, we have not typically looked at blade servers," said Charles Taylor, associate professor of bioengineering and surgery at Stanford University. "Our work involves providing cardiologists and surgeons with the ability to simulate blood flow in patient-specific arterial models and predict outcomes of candidate interventions. However, Hitachi's BladeSymphony with Virtage provides us with all the enterprise-class capabilities we need -- performance, scalability, and built-in virtualization -- in a cost-effective, easier-to-use blade server. It was an easy decision that meets all of our high performance computing needs."

Introduced in Japan in August 2006 and first demonstrated in North America last September at the Intel Developer's Forum, BladeSymphony with Virtage is a 10U chassis, supporting hot-swappable blades capable of running both Windows and Linux. Built on standards-based multi-core Intel processors with Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT), the product allows users to combine, scale, and virtualize BladeSymphony blades based on Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 9000 Series processors.

BladeSymphony with Virtage is also designed with flexibility and integration in mind. BladeSymphony with Virtage can also support BladeSymphony blades based on Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors within the same chassis. Additionally, BladeSymphony with Virtage is available in eight-processor (16-way) SMP configurations. According to Hitachi, this mix of flexibility, integration and scalability makes BladeSymphony with Virtage effective for any enterprise, and particularly for customers running large custom applications and companies actively acquiring other organizations or running other high-growth applications.

"BladeSymphony with Virtage is the first blade server that is truly on the cutting edge," said Elizabeth King, vice president and general manager of Hitachi America, Server Systems Group. "Thanks to our unique backplane and scalable chassis, the new BladeSymphony is built to last with modular upgradeability and ease of manageability in mind. So it reduces risk in a way that previous servers simply cannot. Additionally, with the Virtage feature, we're offering a breakthrough technology -- virtualization baked right into a blade server's hardware for the first time."

Aside from its virtualization technology, BladeSymphony also addresses scalability issues. The product's backplane utilizes an SMP architecture to enable multiple blades to interconnect and act as a single system in one chassis. Offered in two-processor (four-way) Itanium processor blades, BladeSymphony can be scaled up and out to offer up to two eight-processor (16-way) servers in a single chassis, thus reducing footprint and power consumption while increasing utilization.

"Powered by dual-core Intel Itanium 2 processors, the Hitachi Blade Symphony with Virtage provides unprecedented IT freedom and excels in virtualization, flexibility and performance," said Kirk Skaugen, vice president, Intel's Digital Enterprise Group. "This innovative blade platform with virtualization support enables CIOs to move away from aging and expensive legacy systems and instead direct those funds toward standard-based computing and business innovation."

Article Tools

Share & Save Options

Discussion

There are 0 discussion items posted.

Join the Discussion

You must be a registered user in order to comment on On-Demand Enterprise stories.

Members enjoy:

	Access to Special Content, including Podcasts, Webcasts, and Whitepapers and more!
	Ability to take an active role in the discussions that are shaping the On-Demand technology discipline!
	Special offers available only to On-Demand Enterprise members!

Become a Registered User Today!

Registered Users Log in Here to Comment

Email Address:	Password (case sensitive)

Remember me	Forgot Password?

RSS Feeds

Feeds by Topic

Feeds by Content Type

Feature Articles

The Grid-Cloud Connection (Pt. II): Spare the Hype

The advent of cloud computing has drastically affected the product offerings and solutions by grid computing veterans. Everything is about flexibility, mobility, virtualization and, overall, being on-demand. However, after seeing how quickly a nebulous term can lose favor among the user community, vendors are betting on the delivery model but not necessarily the terminology.
Read More...

The Grid-Cloud Connection (Pt. I): Compare and Contrast

Burned to some degree by the confusion surrounding grid computing, many vendors have drastically cut the term from their marketing strategies. As a result, these vendors are not so quick to latch onto cloud computing. However, many of their new directions could easily fall under the cloud umbrella, and those in the know readily acknowledge that grid technologies underlie the cloud. So, what's a middleware vendor to do? How can a user tell the difference?
Read More...

Network-Attached Memory: Virtualization for Java Environments

Network-attached memory is analogous to network-attached storage (NAS) in that it provides a service to thousands of connected clients transparently. As NAS is transparent underneath the file system, network-attached memory is transparent underneath the Java language. But in Terracotta's network-attached memory pool, everything can be massively scaled out.
Read More...

Read more On-Demand Enterprise features...

Top Headlines

Developers Discuss Ways to Program in Cloud Environments

Oct 10 | SD Times | Developers are still trying to figure out just what building applications for the cloud really entails. Read more...

Putting Your Trust in the Cloud

Oct 10 | LinuxInsider | Security in cloud computing is an evolution of the age-old business model of outsourcing. Read more...

The Many Faces of Clustered Storage

Oct 10 | Byte and Switch | Clustered storage is one of the hottest buzz words in the industry, but it means different things when different vendors talk about it. Read more...

Data Warehousing in the Clouds

Oct 09 | Business Intelligence Network | Data warehousing in the clouds has the potential to enable business executives and IT departments to do more with less, work around organizational latency and compete with agility in the digital economy. Read more...