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Boxborough, Mass. - NEC Solutions (America), Inc., a leading provider of business solutions and services for the high-end commercial and professional markets in North America, today blazed a new trail for high availability computing, introducing the industry's first Intel-based rack-mount (4U) fault tolerant server into the North American marketplace, the NEC Express5800/320Lb-R. The 320Lb server, also available in a tower model, sets new standards in density, performance, and ROI for continuously available servers. Housed in its newly designed innovative chassis, the system utilizes redundant blade-like modules (1U) to provide continuous availability and data integrity in the smallest footprint ever released for Fault Tolerant technology. All levels of technical professionals, including datacenter managers seeking the utmost availability in a dense form-factor and technical executives managing distributed environments with minimal IT resources, will find this system a compelling alternative for delivering infrastructure availability. For the first time ever, NEC Solutions integrates hardware based fault tolerant technology, industry standard Intel® Xeon® processors, and Microsoft® Windows®-compatible applications on a compact, rack-mount (4U) or tower platform. This latest addition to NEC Solutions' award-winning fault tolerant server line supports faster processors, faster I/O throughput and greater memory than previous models. A single 42U, 19-inch rack can hold up to eight 2-way fault tolerant servers. Considering its many new features, cost constrained IT teams can now reap the benefits of second-generation, widely adopted fault-tolerant technology and deliver business continuity for critical processes and operations. "Because of the relative simplicity they bring to the high availability equation, and their ability to immediately reduce cost of ownership, we expect fault tolerant systems to have a growing presence and greater influence in the enterprise," said Vernon Turner, Group Vice President, Global Enterprise Server Solutions, IDC. "The value proposition of this new class of fault tolerant system from NEC Solutions should further build market share for the technology with respect to traditional clustered and conventional server systems." Starting at under $26,600 US, $38,9021 Canadian (including 3Yr. limited on-site warranty2), the Express5800/320Lb is comparably priced with an HP ProLiant DL380 G3 Packaged Cluster. When compared with clustered systems in general, the Express5800/320Lb offers critical feature advantages such as no single points of failure, lights out service processors and seamless, simplified integration into Intel-centric environments. NEC Solutions' fault tolerant server also provides application compatibility for standard Windows 2000 and forthcoming Windows Server 2003 applications. Utilizing innovative blade-like packaging, NEC Solutions separates processing, memory and I/O onto separate 1U (1.75") customer replaceable, hot-swappable "modules". Should any hardware component within the module fail, processing continues uninterrupted, without the time delays associated with cluster-based solutions. The failed module can be replaced without the downtime, data loss or application interruption associated with traditional server architectures. The result is a server designed to handle failed hardware components within the system and still remain fully operational without any loss of data or performance. "NEC Solutions' new fault tolerant servers are a means for VARs and Solutions Providers to generate short- and long-term revenue with minimal investments in training and ramp-up," said Larry Rask, Vice President, RAND Worldwide - IT Solutions. "These systems provide all of the attributes that our customers are seeking today - significant cost savings, investment protection, continuous availability, simplification and more. NEC Solutions has engineered the product and its distribution to provide immediate customer value, while all of the marketing and sales support allows VARs and Solutions Providers to create turnkey programs for selling complete solutions including services and maintenance." Fault Tolerant Technology Highlights To achieve true fault tolerance, the NEC Express5800/320Lb features redundant modules that execute the same instructions simultaneously, meaning there is no single point of failure within the server. The system's CPU modules contain 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon processors and can be configured as a 1-way or 2-way system. If users take advantage of the hyper-threading capabilities of the Xeon processor, the system can be configured as a 2-way or 4-way system. Hyper-Threading is Intel's simultaneous multi-threading design, which allows a single processor to manage data as if it were two processors by handling data instructions in parallel rather than one at a time. The technology allows a single physical processor to perform as two logical processors when operated along with Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server3, thereby handling greater workloads, offering faster response times and ultimately providing better performance. Dramatically different from traditional server architectures, the unique modular design of the Express5800/320Lb allows service by non-technical staff without incurring server downtime, application interruption or data loss. This can be particularly important in remote office environments where IT staff must manage the server without being on site. In these environments centralized IT staff can remotely control all aspects of the system operation by utilizing the server's integrated "lights out" service processors in concert with NEC's bundled ESMPRO server management software. There are no add-in cards or additional software required. Monitoring, testing and software upgrades can be performed remotely. Should a component require replacement, a non-technical staff member can simply remove the module and replace it with another. Total Cost of Ownership The NEC Express5800/320Lb fault tolerant server delivers 99.999% availability for all applications running on Microsoft® Windows 2000 Advanced Server and on the forthcoming Microsoft Server 2003 operating system, without requiring any modifications to the applications. By operating software out-of-the-box in a continuous availability state, application users and independent software vendors (ISVs) save considerable development costs by eliminating extensive programming that is typically required to make their applications cluster aware or operational on proprietary high availability systems. This is true for in-house legacy applications within hospital environments, for example, as well as for widely distributed Oracle® database applications. In either extreme, users can simply install the server and run the application continuously without any script development or testing required. In contrast to clustered server systems, which require multiple server purchases, operating system licenses and application licenses, the fault tolerant system from NEC Solutions requires only a single system purchase and operates a single copy of the operating system and single copies of all applications running on the system. Furthermore, clustered systems require extensive application development and management training to configure for failure scenarios and to operate over the long-term. When considered for high availability applications, NEC Solutions' fault tolerant system maintains a far lower cost of ownership. "The first, award-winning generation of our Windows/Intel-based fault tolerant technology was widely adopted by the fastest-growing segments of the server market," said Mike Mitsch, senior director, NEC Solutions America. "This new generation of highly dense, premium performance server reaches further into those markets with high availability benefits that couldn't be obtained by IT professionals in the past. It's affordable, easy to install and manage and will integrate into current and future industry-standard networks. When costs for network outages are factored into the equation, these systems make a strong case for adoption in almost any environment that is considered mission-critical."