NEC breaks benchmark

NEC's new Express 5800 server has broken the TPC-E benchmark performance record with a score about 70% higher than the current leading machine, the Tokyo company said this week, reports washingtonpost.com.

There is another record the company is not as keen to promote: the server has set a new low in cost performance, significantly below the previous bottom-ranked machine.

TPC-E is a new benchmark from the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) that simulates online transactions at a brokerage. Customers generate transactions, account inquiries and market research and the firm interacts with the customers in the simulation.

Financial companies spent the most on servers last year than any other sector, according to a new report, says onestopclick.

Heavy spending in the server industry was seen in 2007, compared to the previous year, with financial industries spending more than communication sectors, reports Gartner.

The companies spent $13.9 billion on servers last year, equating to a quarter of all server sales.

Marathon Technologies has released everRun VM, a product that the company said is the world's first fault-tolerant, high availability software for server virtualisation, says ChannelWeb.

The company said everRun VM prevents outages and data loss in Citrix XenServer virtual infrastructures. The new software enables companies to run high-value production applications in virtual machines by providing virtualisation across a broader range of applications.

In addition, everRun VM provides high availability and disaster recovery as a standard part of the IT infrastructure for medium-sized and larger companies.