HP debuts Itanium 2 Integrity servers

Hewlett Packard (HP) launches a new server line today based on Intel's latest 64bit Itanium 2 6M processor.

Integrity, using the processor previously codenamed Madison, implements HP's adaptive enterprise strategy, a competitor to IBM's On Demand computing, and is aimed at providing enterprises with flexibility and investment protection in heterogeneous environments.

The new Integrity systems are the first from HP that can run HP-UX (Unix), Windows and Linux on a single system.

"It's absolutely the right thing for HP to do," said Martin Hingley, vice president of European systems at IDC.

"The company has done a sterling job on the operating system side. But if HP-UX doesn't work [on Madison], we'll hear about it."

The Integrity systems range from one or two processor entry-level systems up to the 64 processor Integrity Superdome Server, which HP says is the industry's most powerful enterprise system.

"The issue is agility," Rudi Schmickl, HP's vice president of enterprise storage and servers for EMEA, told vnunet.com.

"A more dynamic infrastructure is needed. Things like reducing the time to solution and reuse of resources during the day."

Hingley added that the entry point for Integrity would be a lot higher than for Xeon systems.

"Integrity has got to be for database-centric or online transaction processing use," he said.

"The challenge is trying to get people to take it. A commodity box can't have a sophisticated operating system, and vice versa."

As well as the new Integrity series, HP showcased an improved ProLiant range and enhancements to its zx6000 workstation.

The ProLiant DL560, DL580, DL740 and ML570 servers, and the BL40p blade server, will now use the Intel Xeon Gallatin MP 2.8GHz processor. They will run both Windows and Linux and should be available in mid-July.

The HP workstation zx6000 also now has the Intel 6M processor, which HP says increases application performance by 50 per cent for cache-intensive tasks.