UPDATED: SAN FRANCISCO — Dell Computer expanded its
high-performance computing offerings with the unveiling of a pair of dual
core AMD Opteron-based PowerEdge servers here at the Oracle Open World
conference.
Dell founder and Chairman Michael Dell, touted the new servers as more powerful and energy efficient than previous offerings during an address here
to conference attendees.
The Dell PowerEdge 6950 is a four-socket server designed for high-end tasks, such as database and server consolidation, while consuming up to 20 percent less power than previous-generation four-socket PowerEdge servers.
The PowerEdge SC1435 is a two-socket, rack-dense server optimized for high-performance compute clusters for use in Web servers and small- to mid-sized businesses. The PowerEdge SC1435 can deliver performance-per-watt improvements of up to 138 percent over previous rack servers.
These new servers are very important for Dell, as it finally has a competitive product line in the high-performance area, according to Martin Reynolds, senior analyst with Gartner.
The problem, he said, is that old four-way systems with Intel processors didn’t offer very good performance because they all used the same shared bus.
With the new Opteron line, a four-way system is truly like four one-way computers. “Which is good news for power and efficiency,” he said.
“Over the past year, Opteron has really displaced Intel in the four-way market. “From a strategic perspective, this was the product that Dell needed the most. It gives them four-way performance that’s compelling.”
Dell told conference attendees his company is well aware of the
demands of enterprise customers.
“Dell and Oracle are trusted partners,” said
Dell. “There are over 12,000 Dell PowerEdge servers at Oracle and we run
our business on Oracle and Linux [software].”
He also said Dell was committed to driving Linux “further into the
datacenter.”
A very campy animation preceding his remarks featured cartoon
characters of Dell, and several tech CEOs including Oracle’s Larry Ellison, AMD’s Hector Ruiz, Intel’s Paul Otellini, and EMC’s Joe Tucci singing about
the evils of “Proprietaryville.”
The cartoon’s lyrics included such dubious claims as “AMD and Intel get together so well, because everyone’s friends when they partner with Dell.”
After the logos for Sun’s Solaris and HP’s OpenView flashed by, the
Dell character was heard to say, “Let’s kick some proprietary apps.”
Dell also announced that it and Oracle have integrated Dell OpenManage and Oracle Enterprise Manager to offer a combined, simplified management system for Oracle applications.
The integration of Dell OpenManage and Oracle Enterprise Manager will support system discovery and reporting, hardware health monitoring, cross-platform system event notification and event-driven policy execution.
The PowerEdge 6950 and PowerEdge SC1435 are available now at starting prices of $6,499 and $1,299, respectively.
David Needle contributed to this article.