Dell releases virtualisation optimised servers

Dell has announced the release of two new servers designed specifically with virtualisation in mind.

The PowerEdge R805 and R905 servers are based on quad-core Barcelona flavoured AMD Opteron CPUs and expanded I/O capabilities to cater for the higher bandwidth requirements of virtualisation.

Both feature embedded hypervisors that are fitted either via SD card or USB memory stick. Initially these can be preconfigured with either VMware ESXi3.5 or Citrix XenServer. In addition, Hugh Jenkins EMEA marketing manager, told IT PRO that support for Microsoft's Hyper-V would be added when it emerged from beta in the summer.

When asked if Dell would support other vendor's hypervisors, Jenkins said that the company would look at other options depending on customer demand.

"It's our intention to offer more choice to the market, to make virtualisation more accessible," Jenkins said.

The R805 features double the memory capacity of previous machines with a maximum capacity of 128GB of memory from its 16DIMM slots. It also offers support for up to four network cards and four PCI Express slots, enabling solutions for management and general network traffic monitoring.

The Dell PowerEdge R805 and R905 servers are available worldwide with a starting price of 1,499 and 3,989, excluding VAT and delivery.

Accompanying the new servers, Dell also announced new virtualisation consultation offerings designed to assist and advise companies that are either looking to virtualisation for the first time or want to move an existing solution. The services include workshops and health checks on production environments to ascertain their suitability for virtualisation.

"We have found that customers often prefer to work with a partner. There is an appetite to move towards virtualisation from mid-size companies and even smaller. Our aim is to lower the cost and drive it into the mainstream."