Ben Freeman

Itanium-2 Gets in the Act While IBM’s model is one that includes the kitchen-sink, it doesn’t offer Itanium-2 processors, a space SGI’s new cluster offerings cover well and through more traditional channels. The National Computational Science Alliance (NCSA), a nationwide partnership of more than 50 academic, government, and business organizations prototyping an advanced computational infrastructure […]

What We Call a World “When you actually play our game, you join what we call a world,” Denton said. Eighteen worlds live on eight Dell servers mirroring each other for redundancy purposes. A ninth server acts as a hub for those entering the game. Seven additional servers, which Mythic refers to as World Boxes, […]

Fortinet and SonicWALL Fortify the Enterprise Gartner’s Magic Quadrant matrix provides a graphical representation of a particular marketplace, positioning Leaders, Challengers, Niche Players, and Visionaries on two axes: Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute. Cisco, Netscreen, and Checkpoint have traditionally occupied the Leaders quadrant in the IPS/firewall space, but they are now facing formidable […]

Get Set … Standardization does not rule out specialization, however. In whitebox arena, the lack of brand tie-in often lends itself to easy customization. For example, the “IT in a Box” solution from EmergeCore, enables SMBs without IS organizations to custom build servers. EmergeCore President and CEO Dave Brown cites “ease of use” as the […]

Linux Servers The previous Unisys Server Snapshot commented on Unisys’ reluctance to prioritize Linux operating system support (at the time it was quietly supporting SUSE). Feverston describes the recent addition of support for Red Hat as pushing Linux into unproven scale-up territory. “Our goal is to be able to show people that we can scale […]

If a picture is worth a thousand words, an example is probably worth at least half that. To that end, we introduce the first of our Customer Case Studies. Going forward, we will follow up each Server Snapshot with a Customer Case Study. These articles will zero-in on an enterprise that has deployed a respective […]

What first catches the eye about Dell’s Intel-based PowerEdge servers (especially if comparing them to those of the other major server vendors) is their low price points, which range from $274 to $5,499 for base configurations. Although memory, processor, and operating software options may add thousands to the final price tag, it will still be […]

With a new year now under way, vendors have fallen into their typical new-year pattern of offering deals on server hardware. The slightly brighter outlook 2004 brings with it means some IT departments may be looking to again purchase equipment. Shopping for server hardware brings with it the usual bevy of hard questions: Which server […]

Last week, HardwareToday explored the buy vs. lease decision process. This week, we provide a guide to leasing with an eye on the major U.S. server vendors. We step through the lease evaluation process and compare lease offerings from the top-six U.S. server vendors. The leasing space is valuable for vendors. Technology refresh options, prevalent […]

Unisys has historically made its money in the mainframe market, so it’s not surprising that it is remaining true to its high-end tradition in the Wintel server market. The company is clear about the importance of its scalable ES7000 line (which is based on Windows and Intel CPUs) and interoperability with its Clearpath mainframe systems. […]

Shopping for a server can be akin to navigating an obstacle course, requiring much skill and guile. The biggest problem many enterprises encounter is matching vague pricing to confusing feature sets. Buzzwords proliferate on all sides, confusing first-time shoppers and grizzled veterans alike. Fancy new technologies and terms emerge so quickly that it becomes difficult […]

Late last week, Intel, with much fanfare, announced its researchers created the “World’s Fastest Silicon Photonics Device,” which encodes data into beams of light. While this certainly has the potential to revolutionize computing in the long term, another recent development in the server market is having a more immediate impact: servers that span both 32- […]