2/04/00 - Hardware Vendors Get W2K-Ready
Feb 04, 2000 (Tech Web - CMP via COMTEX) -- With the impending launch of Microsoft Windows 2000,
suppliers of servers are readying wares that take advantage of the new operating system's improved
scalability.
Manufacturers of servers and storage systems are initially planning incremental upgrades, some merely in
the form of software.
Many of the vendors are focusing their efforts on providing migration services: Compaq, Unisys, EMC,
and EMC's recently acquired Data General division this week announced new servers and storage
management systems focused on software and services, rather than new hardware.
"They are just repackaging the old server hardware that's been out there," said Gartner Group analyst
John Enck. The first boxes are aimed at those planning to migrate to Windows 2000, said James Gruener,
an analyst at the Aberdeen Group.
"Most vendors aren't going to just repackage a server. They are going to be packaging everything from
services to manageability tools," Gruener said.
Most of the initial offerings are intended for migration from NT to Windows 2000, rather than from Unix,
analysts said. Indeed, a Merrill Lynch survey of 50 CIOs released this week found that only 8 percent have
any plans to move off of Unix to Windows 2000.
Among the new offerings introduced, Unisys e-@action Solutions for Windows 2000 includes integration
and consulting services, and support.
The Unisys offering is centered around its E7000 server, which now runs Windows NT 4.0.
Tom Miele, director of infrastructure at Penn National Insurance, said his company has decided to run
Windows 2000 on 32-way ES7000s to replace more than 60 smaller servers from a variety of other
vendors.
"We're trying to get down to a few, more hefty servers," Miele said. "One of the things we can do with
Windows 2000 once we get it on a 32-way system is to start doing partitioning and dynamically allocate
resources."
Unisys entry-level ES7000 servers come with eight Intel Pentium III Xeon 550-MHz processors, and are
capable of expansion to 32 processors and 64 GB of memory, with a starting price of $99,127. The
32-way high-end version is priced at $631,721. It has four partitions of eight processors each.
Another hardware manufacturer announcing Windows 2000 support was EMC. In a joint announcement
this week, the company and Microsoft disclosed a partnership to widen storage networking options for
Windows 2000, extending a similar pact it had for Windows NT 4.0 server.
EMC and its Data General division will offer Windows 2000-based storage systems. The company will
offer 24-hour support and guaranteed 99.9 percent uptime for Windows 2000 running on its systems, as
well as migration to Exchange 2000 and SQL Server 7.0. EMC said it intends to train and certify 400
Windows engineers over the next 12 months.
Compaq said it will offer Windows 2000 on its ProLiant line of servers, scaling up to its large-scale
systems.
The company said it will offer continuous availability, which will be supported through PCI Hot Plug for
Windows 2000, allowing customers to add, remove, upgrade, or replace PCI controllers without
interrupting business critical applications or powering down the server.
Compaq will also offer its Online Volume Growth indicator to enable customers to extend disk volumes
under Windows 2000 without having to take down the systems.
"With these new functions, our customers will be able to keep their servers running almost 99 percent of
the time," said Urs Renggli, a Compaq marketing manager.
Compaq will support Windows 2000 on its entire server line, from the Prosignia 740 through the
Enterprise ProLiant 8500, Renggli said.
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