INDUSTRY

IBM eServer BladeCenter World's Most Powerful 2-way Blade Server - IBM today announced enhancements to the eServer BladeCenter that increase performance and functionality while helping reduce customer costs in some situations by as much as 33 percent.(2) Systems based on these enhancements, including the latest Intel Xeon Processor technology, have also set new benchmarks that establish BladeCenter the world's most powerful blade server with 2 processors. As part of the BladeCenter Alliance Program IBM is today announcing several new offerings; IBM is first to market with integrated Layer 2-7 Ethernet switching in blade servers. This level of switching provides customers with the highest level of systems management and control in the industry. This switch enables customers to simplify their datacenter topology, to cut costs and create a network infrastructure that is secure, easy to manage and highly available. This solution also enhances BladeCenter's on demand capabilities as it enables customers to adjust to unpredictable workloads and rapidly changing business needs. Included in the Nortel Networks Layer 2-7 GbE Switch are innovative networking functions including routing, application health checking, network and application load balancing and embedded security. "Integrating Layer 2-7 switch functionality within the blade server chassis in the data center reduces cost of ownership by up to 65 percent(3)," said Jeff Benck, vice president, IBM eServer BladeCenter. "This is accomplished by bringing consolidation and maintenance savings to the server and networking infrastructure thereby reducing customer acquisition costs." IBM also announced the availability of the Myrinet(R) Cluster Expansion Card by Myricom(R), Inc. and the BladeCenter Optical Pass-thru Module. When used together, these options deliver a high-performance, high-availability interconnect for High Performance Technical Computing and other cluster-computing applications. These options integrate directly into BladeCenter, providing the customer with additional high function solutions within one of the industry's densest blade server offerings. The Myrinet Cluster Expansion card on IBM eServer BladeCenter provides the same functions and performance, and uses the same software as the standard Myrinet PCI-X card on highly successful server clusters using xSeries rack-optimized servers. The BladeCenter Optical Pass-thru module can also be used in conjunction with the Fibre Channel Expansion card to allow an alternative connection to Storage Area Networks. The Optical Pass-thru Module allows connectivity to the IBM TotalStorage(TM) family of products including FAStT, Enterprise Storage Server, SAN switches and tape storage. "This alliance of technology leaders - pairing the server expertise of IBM with switching intelligence from Nortel Networks - has resulted in a solution designed to alter the economics of data center computing. An IBM BladeCenter equipped with the Nortel Networks Layer 2-7 Gigabit Ethernet Switch Module will allow enterprises to build an on-demand computing infrastructure," said Masood Tariq, president, Global Alliances, Nortel Networks. "The end result - a computing environment that is simple, yet offers unprecedented levels of availability, performance, scalability, security and operational cost reductions." New Industry Leading Benchmarks for Blade Servers The IBM eServer BladeCenter powered by Intel Xeon 3.06 GHz processors outperformed HP's ProLiant BL20p G2 blade server SPECweb99_SSL and MAPI Messaging benchmarks by delivering more transactions at a lower processing cost, having a higher response time and supporting the most simultaneous users. Most Powerful 2-way Secure Web Blade Server Running on the industry leading Linux operating system from Red Hat, the BladeCenter delivered 1,304 simultaneous connections on the SPECweb99_SSL benchmark outperforming the HP ProLiant BL20p G2 that recorded 1,242 connections. This result shows that BladeCenter delivers leadership performance and scalability for secure web transactions. Highest 2-way Blade-based Performance on Exchange 2000 This benchmark uses the MAPI Messaging Benchmark (MMB2), which measures throughput in terms of a specific profile of user actions, executed over an eight-hour working day. BladeCenter supported 10,000 MMB2s, outperforming the HP ProLiant BL2op's score of 9,500 MMB2s by more that 5%. During the four-hour steady state, BladeCenter provided a weighted 95th Percentile response time of 293 milliseconds for 10,000 MMB2, with an average send queue size of 101 and average CPU utilization of 90.6 percent. Highest 2-way Performance on NotesBench R6 iNotes Workload The iNotes Web Access workload executes Notes transactions that model a server for mail users who access mail via the Web. The resulting capacity metric for a server is the maximum number of users that can be supported before the average user response time becomes unacceptable. BladeCenter supported 4,000 R6 iNotes users at $33.01 per user, and 3,444 NotesMarks (transactions per minute) at $38.34 per NotesMark.