Johannesburg, 17 May 2000
Although beyond the price-range and needs of many South African corporations, Compaq`s GS AlphaServer offers the power and availability that those moving towards e-business will require.
The GS series scales from one to 32 Alpha EV67 731MHz RISC processors, and comes in three basic designs: the GS80, GS160 and GS320. The GS80 box will scale to eight processors, and will also take up to 64GB of memory. 56 PCI slots are addressed through 16 PCI busses, giving a 13GBps internal bandwidth. This machine competes with HP`s N-class servers, and Sun`s Ultra Enterprise 3500 and 4500 systems.
The GS160 scales to 16 CPUs and 128GB RAM, and offers 112 PCI slots at 26GBps aggregate bandwidth.
The high-end GS320 competes against HP`s V-class servers, IBM`s S80 and Sun`s E1000. Boasting 32 EV67 Alpha CPUs, this box offers 256GB RAM, 64 PCI busses supporting 224 PCI slots, and over 51GBps internal bandwidth.
The GS80 and GS160 can be transformed into the GS320. The machines will be compatible with Compaq`s EV68, EV7 and EV8 CPUs when they ship, and users will be able to mix-and-match processors within one box to protect their current processor investment. Scalability towards thousands of CPUs is also on the roadmap, similar to the SC range.
The 16- and 32-processor boxes can ship with dormant processors, which can be brought online as customers` requirements increase. This Capacity on Demand (COD) concept is similar to HP`s instant Capacity on Demand (iCOD) offering.
The non-uniform memory architecture (NUMA) allows partitioning of resources within the cabinet, resulting in the possibility of multiple operating systems on one box. These partitions can scale dynamically as loads vary. Application isolation can also assign certain resources to certain apps, allowing greater protection and prioritisation of the critical apps on the machine. Rolling software upgrades will allow for greater uptime and safer upgrades.
The AlphaServers support Tru64 Unix, OpenVMS and Linux. Microsoft originally committed to shipping Windows 2000 with an Alpha flavour, but this never materialised.
Oracle took advantage of the launch of the product to promote its Internet database, Oracle 8i, which managed to serve 11 200 users concurrently, offering a 1.82 second average response time.
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