Fujitsu announced a blade server system on Tuesday that fits up to 18 blades into a 10U chassis and is designed to make cooling more efficient than in the company's previous systems.
The Primergy BX900, also called the Dynamic Cube, is part of the company's campaign to expand its server sales to 500,000 in 2010, up from 270,000 in 2008, Fujitsu said in a statement.
The new system is designed to offer IT administrators an all-in-one package for the data centre, including server blades, a management blade, networking switches, redundant power supplies and other infrastructure, according to the company.
It is based on Intel's Xeon 5500-series processors — code-named 'Nehalem' — and is designed to take advantage of Nehalem's built-in virtualisation and energy-efficiency features. At Intel's Nehalem launch in March, the company emphasised the cost-cutting aspects of the chip.
Management of both physical and virtual servers is handled by Fujitsu's ServerView Resource Coordinator VE management software. Fujitsu said it is planning to update this software to support blade server systems from competitors including Dell, HP and IBM.
The management software automates tasks such as the provisioning or exchanging of servers and can deliver the same operations to pools of physical and virtual servers. The company said the ability to centrally manage large numbers of physical and virtual servers makes the BX900 particularly suitable for consolidation projects.
The enclosure supports up to 18 blades in a standard 10U chassis, which Fujitsu said was denser than other 10U systems from competitors, such as HP's c7000 or Dell's M1000e, which both support 16 blades.
Fujitsu's previous Primergy system, the BX600, supported 10 blades in a 7U chassis.
Currently, the BX900 supports 10Gb Ethernet and Fibre Channel input-output technologies, with support for InfiniBand to be added later. Multiple BX900 enclosures can be daisy-chained for further scalability, Fujitsu said.
The BX900 uses a new cooling system, called Cool-safe, that the company said is designed to reduce data centre energy costs by improving the flow of air through the enclosure.
The Dynamic Cube is available for pre-orders immediately and will begin shipping on 21 May.
