SAN FRANCISCO — HP and IBM have already
announced new servers powered by Intel’s latest dual-core Xeon processors, but Dell is the first major vendor to ship them.
Dell said PowerEdge 1950, 2950 and 2900 servers based on Intel’s
“Dempsey”, the 5000 series dual-core Xeon processor, are available now. The Xeon series
5100, codenamed Woodcrest, will be available in the PowerEdge series in the
next few weeks.
Dell notes it’s seen as much as a 152 percent performance improvement in
the 5100 series over the previous generation of 2U Dell PowerEdge servers.
HP and IBM have said their new servers, expected out soon, also boast much higher
performance.
“We’ve reached the point that price performance is pretty much
equivalent, it’s the least interesting aspect,” John Enck, a vice president
of research with Gartner Group
, told internetnews.com. “The discussion
is really moving more to manageability, services and options around the box,
as well as power issues around the data center.”
Neil Hand, Dell’s vice president of worldwide enterprise marketing,
agreed
performance issues are no longer the top IT priority and that Dell uses many of the same components as other manufactures.
Dell’s strategy with this new line of servers is to standardize as many
of the components and placement of components throughout the computer for
easier serviceability. Dell’s also now lays claim to being the only system
vendor with a single system image (BIOS, drivers, operating systems and
applications) to manage three different servers.
Enck said the changes are good and shows Dell’s continued investment in
R&D but doesn’t think the new systems will upset the competitive balance.
“I don’t see the fortunes of Intel
, Dell or AMD
changing with this
announcement. This is Intel finally
realizing they were behind AMD in performance and power issues and catching
up if not being a bit ahead now.”
Like its competitors, Dell said its latest servers reduce power
consumption. In Dell’s case, by as much as 25 percent.
“What IT customers are focused on is how to better manage their
environment and the chaos that’s been created there,” Hand told
internetnews.com in a briefing here.
Hand said hardware costs have remained relatively stable the past few
years, but the cost of managing those systems has risen about ten percent
annually.
These systems also feature what Dell believes is the first programmable
LCD warning light for a quick visual diagnosis of server faults.
The Dell PowerEdge 1950, 2900 and 2950 servers based on the Xeon 5000
series are priced starting at $1,749 to $1,849. The same systems and new
blade systems based on the 5100 series Xeons will be available in the next
few weeks, with pricing to be announced then.
In a related move, Dell today unveiled two network-attached storage
machines: the 2900 Storage Server and 2950 Storage Server.
The machines help corporate customers store and share files and are based
on Dell’s PowerEdge 2900 and 2950 servers.
Howard Shoobe, senior manager of the Dell PowerVault Disk portfolio, said
the new storage servers can be pre-installed and pre-configured with
Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 in as little as 15 minutes.
This is a boon at a time when some machines take hours to configure and
run. The systems also include single instance storage (SIS) and file
replication features with a distributed file system to pipe files to remote
branch offices.
Dell’s NAS storage servers are available today, starting at $2,980.
Dell today also added to its line of tape libraries, with the PowerVault
ML6030 control module (CM) and PowerVault ML6000 expansion module (EM).
These products include self-diagnostic capabilities.
Clint Boulton contributed to this story
The ML6000 EM offers additional drive and cartridge capacity for any ML6000
solution, while the ML6030 CM can scale up to 10 Fibre Channel
cartridges.
Customers can purchase the PowerVault ML6030 CM at around $36,000 and the
PowerVault ML6000 EM for $13,000.
