infrastructure briefs

February 9, 2001 —

Dell and Unisys recently announced an agreement to sell notebooks, desktops and servers from one another's lines over the next three years that could result in $1 billion in sales, the firms say. The deal will extend some new services to Dell end users through Unisys offerings. The agreement calls for Dell to buy 16-processor and 32-processor symmetric multiprocessing systems from Unisys and sell them under the Dell name. Dell will serve as the direct service and support contact for users who buy those systems, but will partner with Unisys to give users installation, maintenance and technical support. For its part, Unisys will buy dual-, quad- and eight-processor PowerEdge servers from Dell and resell them under the Unisys name. Unisys will provide its own support and service for those systems. Unisys is also going to provide managed network services and standard rollout services for Dell end users installing OptiPlex desktops, Latitude notebooks and single-processor PowerEdge Servers.

Users won't need to worry about downtime with a new clustered appliance package Compaq launched this month. The TaskSmart N-Series network-attached storage appliances can now be clustered in two-node configurations and supply failover protection. Both systems are actively running the same processes. When one fails, the other continues operations. When the failed box is repaired, it is added back into the cluster configuration without affecting performance.

The TaskSmart N-Series Cluster supports more than 10 terabytes of storage capacity and starts at $175,000. It will be available this quarter.

Network World