VM-Aware » Servers

IBM Hardware Revenue Soars!

Paul Shannon — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:19:37 +0000

A number of customers have mentioned over the years that surely IBM & HP must be worried about virtualisation impinging on overall hardware sales. I always said that the kinds of servers that people buy for virtualisation are usually significantly more expensive than the customers would previously have purchased. This means that the volume might be lower, but the overall spend has a tendency to be as high if not higher.

This seems to have been the case for IBM at least as they have managed to get back to the top of the server hardware sales tree in the second quarter. With revenues topping $3.9B according to Gartner which means they overtake HP with total sales at $3.8B. The interesting bit to me is how IBM can sell less than half (302,000) that of HP (680,000) and still make more money.

I read about this story over at the Avastu Blog of Tarry Singh. I particularly like this blog for its informative and insightful post.

Next Gen IBM Servers (X4)

Paul Shannon — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 22:09:25 +0000

I don’t like to show favouritism, but IBM do make some incredible kit. I know it isn’t cool to get excited about servers, but I had the privilege of seeing a new M2 version of the excellent x3850.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me, but some of the design enhancements were incredible.

Simple things like making the top half of the chassis hinged so that processors can be replaced without having to take half the front fascia off.

Much more can be read by clicking here.

Some benchmarks for this server can be read here.

Sun Fire X4450 Server

Paul Shannon — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 21:50:41 +0000

Sun have just announced a potentially market conquering piece of kit called the Sun Fire X4450 server.

This puppy is a 2U server that support 4 x Quad Core Intel Xeon CPUs with a colossal 128GB of RAM via its 32 Dimm Slots.

I say it is a potential market conquering, because whilst everyone else is chasing the energy efficiency market but all in 4u boxes they are forgetting space saving.

This is of critical importance for data centers and these X4450bad boys are going to see some serious uptake.

Read all about it by clicking here.

HP Shorty

Paul Shannon — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 15:30:59 +0000

Just as most people suspected, HP have released a comparable product to IBM’s BladeCenter S product.

HP went to great pains to promote this product and were giving away free t-shirts with “What is Shorty?” on the back. They also tried to whip people into a frenzy by having a placquard with “be at our stand at 12:15 for the biggest announcement at VMworld”.

Don’t get me wrong, I think ‘desktop’ baldecenters are cool, but not so cool when another company already has one. IBM announced their product in June , with a view of getting it to market right now.

I will be getting hold of full specs for the Shorty blade system and will post them when I do.