IBM's Power Moves; Red Hat's HPC Solution; Dell's Integrated D2D Solution

IBM Corp. unveiled a new Power express servers, new Power 570 options, and BladeCenter enhancements. In other news, Red Hat Inc. delivers an integrated Linux-based High Performance Computing (HPC) platform while Dell Inc. announced an integrated disk-to-disk (D2D) backup and recovery solution.

Focal Points:

• IBM announced new Power 560 Express Servers in a two node modular design that use IBM's 3.6 GHz Power6 processors. The servers can be configured with four, eight, or 16 cores and up to 384 GB of memory. Users of IBM's i software platform now have a four core Power 520 and eight core Power 550 Express options. A new release of Systems Director, release 6.1, allows for management of all of these servers from a single management console. Three new processor options for the Power 570 are also available. The 570 now has 4.4 GHz and 5.0 GHz processor options along with a "double-density" option for up to 32 cores at 4.2 GHz. IBM states there is improved resiliency with hot node add and repair for the Power 570 and 595 servers. The BladeCenter servers can now be pre-installed with AIX and i, support LTO 4 tape drives, and have more storage and I/O options, including a new entry level DS3000 storage array.
• Red Hat stated it was delivering an HPC Solution that includes all of the components necessary to build and manage a complete HPC cluster in a simple, ready-to-deploy package. According to officials the all-in-one stack allows customers to deploy a fully integrated environment in minutes rather than weeks or months. The Red Hat all-in-one HPC Solution incorporates all of the components necessary to deploy and maintain HPC clusters. Included in the package are Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 and Platform Computing Corp.'s cluster software framework, Platform Open Cluster Stack 5. The solution also includes device drivers, a simple cluster installer, cluster management tools, a resource and application monitor, interconnect support and Platform Lava, a powerful job scheduler.
• Dell revealed its Dell PowerVault DL2000, an integrated D2D backup and recovery solution that comes factory installed and verified with either CommVault Systems Inc. Simpana or Symantec Corp. Backup Exec software plus integrated tools for rapid setup. Dell claims backup times are slashed by up to 52 percent and restore times by up to 77 percent compared to tape. The turnkey solution provides automated storage setup, has a centralized management console, and can address all aspects of backup, recovery and de-duplication, according to officials. Advanced add-on features, such as archive and replication capabilities, can be integrated as well. The system can be configured up to 144 TB of usable disk space.

Experton Group believes integrated offerings designed to drastically reduce speed to usage and significantly increase productivity will comprise the next wave of products geared toward the small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), branch or remote offices, and large departments. Most of these solutions will involve the integration of products from multiple vendors, sold as a single package. Experton Group expects the trend to momentum because of the current financial crisis. IT executives should include integrated offerings in their short list of alternatives, where appropriate, and ensure total cost of ownership (TCO) is one of the selection criteria.