Two years after ducking out of the eight-way server market, Dell is once again producing servers with eight processors — but without the engineering complexity of its old big-iron plans.
Dell's new dual-core, quad-socket PowerEdge edge servers are being targeted at shops migrating to Microsoft SQL Server 2005, and other enterprise applications that traditionally sat on two and four-way servers but which are now scaling increasingly well.
It's a sign that those at the buying end will be able to buy commodity hardware to handle jobs which just a few years ago required a 16-way or larger server, say analysts.
"This is not differentiation from Dell," said Philip Dawson, vice-president of server research at Gartner. "It is dilution of the server market, and the whole move to dual-core processors will dilute the market down to cheaper commodity hardware. Two-way servers will increasingly replace four-way servers, and so on."
Although a server with four dual-core processors is unlikely to perform as well as a server with eight single-core processors, "you will probably get 60 to 70 percent extra performance for something like a 20 price hit," said Dawson. Dell itself is quoting a 51 percent performance improvement.
In addition, commodity four-way servers are much easier and cheaper to manufacturer than eight-way machines, which require more complex engineering, all of which will play to Dell's strengths, said Dawson. For applications such as Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server 2005, a four-way server with dual processors could hit a real sweet spot, he added.
The will however be other challenges for a company such as Dell — and these will come in the form of service and support. ZDNet UK articles on Dell service typically generate hundreds of TalkBacks from aggrieved customers and hundreds more defending the company, many from Dell's own outsourced support companies.
"They are harvesting a lot of that support back in-house now," said Dawson. "But even so, just because you can do [the equivalent of] an eight-way server, doesn't mean you can support it," said Dawson. "Many people buying these boxes will be replacing 20-year-old Unix servers. You can commoditise the box, but you can't commoditise the operating systems, applications and management, and with the complexity of dual and multi-core licensing from different software vendors, you're going to need some good management software on there.
Dell said it plans to offer SQL Server 2005 directly to customers, either pre-packaged on Dell PowerEdge servers or via existing licensing agreements. It is also to introduce new services, from assessment to installation, tuning and pro-active maintenance.
"Dell can provide a single point of contact for enterprise database needs, from hardware and software to services and storage, with great performance today and headroom for future growth," said Steve Lewis, enterprise systems director for Dell UK.
The new PowerEdge 6800 and 6850 servers are due to ship on 15 November with Intel's Paxville dual-core Xeon processors. The 6800 starts at £7,999, and the 6850 starts at £4149, both excluding VAT.
