Unisys Debuts High-End Wintel Server Based On Xeon MP
Unisys Microsoft
At CeBit 2002 in Hannover, Germany, this week, the Blue Bell, Pa. systems manufacturer and integrator will unveil what it claims to be the most scalable server based on the Wintel architecture.
The company's 32-way Enterprise Server ES7000/200, which will ship in April, is based on Microsoft's Windows 2000 Datacenter Server and/or Windows.Net server beta and Intel's recently unveiled Xeon Processor MP, executives said this week. The Windows.Net server software won't ship until the second half of 2002.
It is the only server that fully exploits the Windows 2000 Datacenter's 32-processor scalability and Intel's new powerful server chip, formerly code-named Foster. The ES7000/200 also incorporates Unisys' new Server Sentinel systems management software, which offers system health monitoring, self-healing, unattended operations and health adviser features to guard against system failures.
The ES7000 series competes against other high-end Intel servers from Microsoft OEM partners as well as Unix offerings from Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and IBM. Unisys claims the Server Sentinel software achieves the level of auto-diagnostic and auto-healing capabilities offered by IBM's eLiza software on its eServer series. "We're really moving into the Unix environment," said Mark Feverston, vice president of Unisys' Server Programs, alluding to the ability of Intel-based high-end servers to beat Unix servers. "I think the tide is turning."
Unisys executives estimate the ES7000/200 server represents a 20 percent performance improvement over the existing ES7000, whose unique cellular multiprocessing (CMP) architecture supports both 32-bit processors such as the Xeon processor MP and Intel's 64-bit Itanium architecture. Unisys has snagged an impressive array of ES7000 customers including Pilgrim's Pride, the city of Minneapolis and Sun America.
Unisys also plans to debut a next-generation WinTel server based on Intel's second-generation 64-bit chip, code-named McKinley, during the second half of 2002, executives said.
Other sources close to Microsoft said the forthcoming Windows.Net server, an upgrade of the current Windows 2000 series, will fully exploit the power of McKinley.