Unisys Corporation announced enhancements to its line of enterprise servers, along with a framework designed to help clients select the virtualization architecture appropriate and most cost-effective for their enterprises.
Unisys said it is making the new VMware vSphere 4, the latest version of the VMware virtualization software, available across its entire line of Unisys Enterprise Servers. These servers range from rack/tower-based ES3000 servers, to ES5000 blade servers, to large-scale ES6000 series. Additionally, Unisys is launching new models of the ES3000 and ES5000 families that use new dual-core and quad-core Intel Xeon processor 5500 chipsets. Unisys will also be providing advisory and implementation services for these new platforms.
The new server solutions offer clients a wider range of choices in how they deploy virtualized environments, and provide more powerful vehicles for cloud computing and other critical enterprise applications, Rod Sapp, marketing director for enterprise servers at Unisys, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "In addition to refreshing some of our server portfolio, there is also a decision framework where we can help clients make the right choices and do virtualization right the first time and not have to do 'do-overs' because they made some wrong decisions and pay the expense of that."
The new models in the ES3000 family of rack and tower servers-Models 3530R, 3560R and 3560T-are designed for use in a range of enterprise applications, including server consolidation, email services, database applications and Web services. Accommodating up to 16 blades in a single chassis, the ES5000 Model 5300B G2 blade server is suited for virtualization and server consolidation applications, Unisys said.
The new Unisys server models include Intel Virtualization Technology that is embedded with the chipmaker's Xeon 5500 series processors. The technology is designed to reduce demands placed on virtualization software, enabling clients to consolidate applications and handle heavier workloads per server.
Combining these processor features with support for the new VMware vSphere 4 virtualization software, the new Unisys server models can "dramatically" improve the performance of virtualized environments, according to Unisys. In addition, processor core support has doubled to 64 cores, enabling Unisys ES6000 Model 7600R Enterprise Server clients to create a larger number of VMs and enhance performance in a scale-up environment.
Unisys said it is offering a decision framework that is intended to help clients understand the implications of the large number of virtualization technologies being introduced to the market. "Everyone is sold on virtualization, but they want to know what the best practices are," Sapp observes. "That ranges from helping with the business case, quantifying the financial advantages and understanding the payback period, to architecture selection-scale up or scale out-to going from scale-out to scale-up and the need for help to transform internal processes to do that, to deployment and implementation."
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