Compaq Computer Corp has announced a new high availability strategy and two flagship ProLiant servers, the 7000 and 6500, which it claims offers twenty four hour, seven day a week access to critical data with the first Intel-based servers to feature PCI Hot Plug technology. According to Compaq the PCI Hot Plug reduces scheduled downtime by making it possible to replace a failed PCI peripheral board without having to power down and disrupt user service, while a selection of high availability features eliminate unscheduled faults and provide quick monitoring, analysis and pre-failure alerts. The ProLiant 7000 is available now for customers requiring continuous data access at around $15,000 for a rack-ready system offering 200 MHz Pentium Pros and 512 KB of cache. The ProLiant 6500 is a rack-mounted streamlined version with the same processor and cache levels. 1MB cache models will ship at the end of this year while migration support for eight processors is promised on the 7000 version in the future. Compaq’s announcement came in the same week that its soon-to-be-subsidiary, Tandem Computers Inc launched its first fault tolerant clustered NT servers (CI No 3,223). Both Compaq and Tamdem refused to comment on how the systems might overlap, saying that the two companies were currently operating as separate companies. The merger is due for completion on August 29. For now the mission critical, high end of the enterprise is very much a distant aim for Compaq’s NT-based servers, although it reports that the new ProLiant offerings supply what customers are demanding, as the topic of high availability has for the first time become a more important choice factor than price performance. Meanwhile, Compaq executives are set to talk about the company’s UnixWare strategy at Santa Cruz Operation Inc’s SCO Forum event.
