HP bolsters Unix server lineup
CALLING THE UNIX server market a "three-horse race" between Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, and IBM, Hewlett-Packard officials on Tuesday introduced a four-way L3000 model entry-level server.
Designed as an extension of HP's 9000 L-Class server family, the L3000 offers features previously available only on the company's high-end Unix servers, such as utility pricing and hardware partitioning.
Both features appeal to Internet service providers, whose server purchases constitute the majority of Sun's lead in the Unix server market, said Mark Hudson, worldwide marketing manager for HP's Business Systems and Technology Operation.
Standing seven rack units in size, or 12.25 inches, the L3000 is powered by four PA-8600 RISC processors, and will remain compatible with all future PA-RISC processors as well as the upcoming IA-64 Itanium processors from Intel, Hudson said.
With HP's utility pricing, customers can deploy the L3000 in one of three ways:
as a two-way server, paying for the use of only two processors until it is necessary for the remaining two processors to be activated; as a two-way server, paying for the use of only two processors until spikes in network activity require the remaining two processors to come online temporarily, then returning to use as a two-way server; or as a four-way server stored on premises and ready to add to the network as the company grows.
With any of the utility pricing options, the L3000 notifies HP via the Internet when either new processors or a complete new server goes online. At that point, the customer is billed for the additional processing power or for the complete server, depending on the scenario.
The L3000 also offers hardware partitioning for customers who wish to perform software isolation inside the server. This feature is ideal for service providers who routinely manage networks that house a variety of different operating systems chosen by their customers, Hudson said.
HP believes that Palo Alto, Calif.-based Sun Microsystems' eight-way servers are the only Sun boxes that can match the performance of the HP L3000 four-way server, said Dan Luster, an L-Class product manager at HP.
As for Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM, Luster said the performance of the HP L3000 outperforms Big Blue's 4-way pSeries 640 Unix server.
Pricing for the L3000 server begins at $39,000.
InfoWorld
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