HP Doubles Processing Power of Itanium-Based Systems

The company's mx2 module doubles the procesing power of its Itanium-based Integrity systems.

Hewlett-Packard Co. is rolling out new hardware, software and services designed to push forward the companys Adaptive Enterprise utility computing strategy. At the companys ENSA@Work conference in Munich, Germany, HP officials on Wednesday are unveiling a new module that will double the processing power of its Itanium-based Integrity systems. The new mx2 module will feature two 64-bit Itanium 2 processors on a single module, said Mark Hudson, vice president of marketing for HPs Enterprise Storage and Servers group. IT administrators will be able to replace existing single-processor modules in their current four- to 128-way systems with the mx2, Hudson said. That will turn a customers 128-way Superdome into a 256-processor server without having to buy a new system.
In addition, the Palo Alto, Calif., company is introducing its StorageWorks Reference Information Storage System, or RISS, that Hudson said helps enterprises deal with the growing amount of data that needs to be stored on a long-term basis, particularly in light of such federal regulations as and . The solution, in part the result of HPs acquisition last year of Persist Technologies Inc., also makes indexing, searching and retrieval of the data easier. HPs storage grid architecture makes each of those tasks a "smart cell," complete with its own hardware, storage, search engine and retrieval capabilities. The solution also includes accompanying services, and will be followed in the future with a developer tool kit, HP officials said. Also in Munich, HP introduced new information lifecycle management services, including Business Requirement Analysis to assess everything from an enterprises regulatory compliance to archiving requirements and policies, and Electronic Vaulting Service to help businesses design and create backup capabilities either on-site or hosted by HP. In addition, the company is introducing to its NonStop line of high-availability systems the same mission-critical services that it has in its other servers. Prior to this, these systems—holdovers from the Compaq Computer Corp. acquisition—were managed by propriety services designed specifically for the NonStop systems. Check out eWEEK.coms Server and Networking Center at http://servers.eweek.com for the latest news, views and analysis on servers, switches and networking protocols for the enterprise and small businesses.