IBM expands its Power7 server range

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IBM has launched five Power7 servers in line with its year-long commitment to produce systems optimised for specific workloads.

The line up comprises a high-end 256-core Power 795 and four entry-level Express Servers. All five systems will be available from 17 September.

The Power 795 supports up to 8TB of memory and employs the company’s EnergyScale technology that varies frequencies depending upon the workload. Performance is over four times that of the previous Power 595 server based on Power6 processors, according to IBM. The figures are based on energy envelope figures which take into account the total power required to drive the system and to provide cooling.

The core count is four times that of the previous systems and uses PowerVM virtualisation software to allow more than 1,000 virtual servers to run on one physical system.. This, IBM claims, has the potential to allow customers to avoid, or reduce the cost of, expanding or building new data centres.

The servers can be used in Power Flex combinations. Power Flex allows applications to be moved from one system to another while still running when system maintenance is necessary or to balance workloads during peaks in demand.

The four Express servers are the Power 710, 720, 730 and 740. will be available in compact rack-mount or tower formats. The servers can be supplied in combination to run IBM’s Smart Analytics System 7700 as a single, optimised system to analyse data inside the database. The system is supplied complete with the analytics software, DB2 database and InfoSphere Warehouse software running on AIX Unix. Prices for the basic 710 Express server start at $6,385 (£4,089).

IBM continued its attack on HP and Oracle by announcing that 285 customers moved critical business workloads from competitive systems during the second quarter of this year. This included 171 from Oracle and 86 from HP under IBM’s Migration Factory programme.

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