HP, Dell, IBM and Fujitsu Siemens Computers will ship several high-adoption servers with VMware-enabled technology.
VMware ESX server 3i, the company's hypervisor, is being included as embedded technology in IBM's HS21 Blade server; in several of Dell's PowerEdge servers, including the 2950III, M600 Blade; and HP's Proliant DL380.
Speaking during yesterday's opening address of WMworld 2008, in France, IBM VP of marketing for systems and blade centres Sergio Amoni said IBM and VMware had been working together for eight years to research and develop virtualisation in IBM's systems.
IBM participated in a benchmark process to test the number of individual mailboxes that could be processed on virtualised servers, using Microsoft Exchange and IBM's x3850.
"We have reached a milestone, which both companies are proud of. Thanks to virtualisation technology, we managed to support 16 000 mailboxes on 16 cores," explained Amoni.
The virtualised deployment of the system exceeds the capacity, and extracts more from the hardware resources than a native deployment, he said. "Traditionally, you could run 200 mailboxes per exchange server. We are now running 200 mailboxes per virtualised server on a single physical device."
Dell chief marketing officer Mark Jarvis said Dell will ship all its new servers with the VMware hypervisor integrated. "We do want to give our customers the choice, so they can order new servers either with the product embedded, or without, and install it later," he said.
HP VP for industry-standard servers in EMEA Iain Stephen said virtualisation is taking off globally. Giving customers the choice to buy servers with embedded virtualisation technology is imperative, he added.
Share