Nemertes Impact Analysis:

HP, Cisco Emphasizing 2U Servers, Highlighting Trend Away From 1U

HP (NYSE:HPQ) has released, and Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) will be releasing in Q4, new 2U server lines aimed squarely at the virtualizing data center. Both HP and Cisco are emphasizing high-memory configurations and other features making the boxes good virtualization hosts. Nemertes' finds data centers about 37% virtualized on average, and shifting away from 1U servers as they proceed. Only 4% of research participants are using 1U servers as their primary virtualization platform, while 38% use blades and 40% use 2U servers. The main reasons for the shift: hypervisor management licensing costs and 1U-server memory and processor limitations.

Impacts: 

Enterprises: If you rejected Cisco's unified computing system mainly for its blade-centrism, reassess it after the rack-mount systems ship. 

Vendors: IBM (NYSE:IBM), Dell (NASDAQ:DELL), Sun (NASDAQ:JAVA), make 2U servers a major system design innovation focus. 

Investors: Privately held SGI (nee Rackable) approaches servers from a different perspective, angling to capitalize on the growth of 

virtualization-driven cloud computing. 

John Burke, Principal Research Analyst 

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/en/WF02a/15351-15351-3896136.html 

http://www.nemertes.com/benchmarks/nemertes_benchmark_desktop_and_server_virtualization 
 

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