Server sales falling

Sales of servers, a major revenue source for several top tech firms, have fallen on hard times, reports CNN Money.

Unit shipments between October and December fell 12% from a year ago, while revenue dipped 14% as every major vendor saw sales fall, according to IDC, a market research firm.

Server sales were flattened by the global recession, and also a faster than expected drop-off in Western Europe and Asia, according to IDC Group vice-president Matthew Eastwood.

Super Micro Computer will soon push the envelope on server density, states The Register.

At the CeBIT 2009 trade show in Hannover, Germany (3 to 8 March), the white box server and motherboard maker will deliver a new four-in-one server dubbed the Twin2.

The Twin2 servers will pack four half-width motherboards inside a 2U server chassis, the kind of chassis that is the workhorse form factor for a single motherboard with two sockets.

VMware revealed virtualisation products to the 4 400 attendees of its user group meeting in Europe, states Information Week.

Products such as vCentre Server Heartbeat and vShield bring it closer to supplying the data centre operating system via its virtual machine management capabilities.

VMware's former VM provisioning and management server, Virtual Centre, has been renamed vCentre Server. VMware unveiled vCentre Server Heartbeat, a product to monitor the central management server, at its conference, VMworld Europe 2009, taking place in Cannes, France this week.