Hitachi launched enterprise-class blade server

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Hitachi has unveiled what it claims is the industry's first enterprise-class blade server.

The company said that its new BladeSymphony with Virtage product would provide users with enterprise-class data centre functionality. The blade has an embedded virtualisation feature which builds virtualisation right into a blade server's hardware.

The blade also includes blade symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) interconnect technology that the company said improves scalability by enabling users to configure multiple blades, so that they work as a single system.

The product has already been in used by several of Hitachi's customers several customers, including Stanford University's Cardiovascular Biomechanics Research Laboratory (CBRL).

Dr. Charles Taylor, associate professor of bioengineering and surgery at Stanford University, said that CBRL's procedures required such intensive computing needs and that meant that his organisation had not typically looked at blade servers, but the new product had provided it with "performance, scalability, and built-in virtualisation - in a cost-effective, easier-to-use blade server."

"Our work involves providing cardiologists and surgeons with the ability to simulate blood flow in patient-specific arterial models and predict outcomes of candidate interventions," he said.

Vernon Turner, group vice president and general manager of Enterprise Computing at IDC said the new embedded virtualisation technology will "further fuel the significant growth of the blade market, as IDC has projected."

"Mix-and-match capabilities that allow users to work with Intel Xeon processor- and Itanium processor-powered blades in the same chassis, will give end users an expanded variety of options as they design their enterprise-class environment," he said.

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