Upgraded blades are now available for both the BladeSymphony 1000, the industry’s first enterprise-class blade server – one that can service mission-critical, enterprise-level computing needs while lowering the total cost of ownership – and for the BladeSymphony 320, which simplifies edge-tier and application-tier consolidation. Both upgraded versions continue to improve upon a performance per watt ratio that is enabling the datacenter to become more efficient and responsive to changing environmental concerns.

“The ongoing collaboration between Hitachi and Intel continues to raise the bar in the blade server industry,” said Kirk Skaugen, vice president and general manager of Intel’s Server Platforms Group. “We are excited to have Hitachi’s BladeSymphony customers realize the performance, energy efficiency and virtualization benefits of the Intel® Itanium® and Xeon® platforms today, while we continue to evolve the future capabilities of our platforms.”

Matt Eastwood, group vice president, Enterprise Platform Research at IDC, said, “IDC believes that the compute platform for the datacenter of the future will be bladed. Customers are looking for enterprise class capabilities in a blade form factor and Hitachi understands the need for improved energy efficiency and performance.”

For the BladeSymphony 1000, Hitachi has introduced upgraded versions that are now the highest-performing Itanium-based blades on the market. New versions of dual-core models utilizing Intel’s Itanium® 9100 series processors, as well as versions running on dual-core Xeon 5200 processors and quad-core Xeon 5400 processors, feature improved power efficiency, faster processor and system performance, and enhanced virtualization based on Intel’s upgraded virtualization technology.

There are also new versions of the BladeSymphony 320 available. A version that supports the Xeon® 5200 series and Xeon® 5400 series processors features improvements in the blade’s virtualization capabilities, power efficiency, and overall performance. Another new version of the BladeSymphony 320 features Xeon chips that allow for low-voltage memory and processor technologies. These are designed specifically to reduce power consumption by 20-30 percent and to enable a higher density of blades to be powered by a standard 110-volt wall socket. It is the highest-density 6U server available.

In addition, the new versions of BladeSymphony were created with customer flexibility and investment protection in mind. All blades are ‘field-expandable’, which means that customers using existing BladeSymphony systems do not need to buy a completely new unit, since older and new generations of Intel processors can be mixed and matched in the same chassis. As such, customers can add one the new blades to their existing chassis and instantly begin experiencing performance upgrades.

“We chose to use the latest BladeSymphony 1000 with Virtage in our datacenter because of the scalability, flexibility, power efficiency and pure computing power it offers,” said Jeremiah Jahn, CTO of Judici.com, a provider of record-keeping software for the Illinois justice system. “With the embedded virtualization capabilities of Virtage, we’ve been able to implement up to 14 different partitions on just two blades. This translates to tremendous cost savings and – with Virtage and the updated Intel Xeon chipsets – an even faster datacenter.”

Steve Campbell, vice president of marketing for the Hitachi Server Systems Group, said, “The BladeSymphony’s legacy of innovation is that of a journal in a way. Every continued upgrade to the system has significance to the enterprise. The question becomes whether organizations want a do-it-yourself model or a professional team that has countless years of server experience. The journal of innovation we have written in constantly improving BladeSymphony is representative of Hitachi’s continued commitment to keeping the customers’ need for flexibility and scalability top of mind.”

In related news, Hitachi also announced:

* A web-based console for BladeSymphony 320: Hitachi has developed an interface for BladeSymphony that addresses tasks in two categories – common administrative tasks and tasks prone to error. The web-based console provides a visual interface that decreases maintenance and installation time as well as a schema for validation that reduces the risk of making an error that will result in adverse effects to the system.
* A two-fold increase in maximum disk space addressing the needs of expanding on-demand databases, richer multimedia and records management that organizations face.
* A number of new resellers that expand the group’s reach nationwide. These include Praecipio Consulting, Consiliant, Data Partner Group and I-Access.