Fujitsu Debuts Intel-Based Blade Server

Fujitsu Computer Systems on Tuesday rolled out a new Intel-based blade server powered by the Pentium M processor and capable of housing up to 20 ultra-compact blades.

Fujitsu's Primery BX300 blade server, a 3U-high, 19-inch rack server, contains up to 4 Gbytes of ECC DDR-SRAM memory, offers 2 Gigabit Ethernet connections per blade, and stocks up to a pair of 20- or 60-Gbyte IDE hard drives in a RAID array.

Targeting data centers and Internet service providers, the scalable server can accommodate up to 20 mono blades running the Pentium M processor at 1.4GHz or 1.6GHz, said Fujitsu. The move to the Pentium M, Fujitsu claimed, can provide speed increases of up to 25 percent over existing dual-server blades.

Other features of the BX300 -- which starts at $6,500 -- include support for both Linux and Microsoft Windows Server 2003, redundant and hot-plug power units and fans, and an optional PCI slot for deploying a Fibre Channel connection.