Guild Companies

Intel has become the dominant microprocessor vendor in the server market, accounting for 85 percent to 90 percent of shipments. The chipmaker has always coveted the revenue and profits that its OEM server partners get from selling servers based on its chips and chipsets. But Intel can't go directly into the server business, or those OEMs will balk. That's why Intel is only going half-way into the server business with the building block servers that were announced this week.

Specifically, Intel has created a line of server boards using its processors as well as its own chipsets and those from rival ServerWorks, server chassis, RAID disk controllers, and server management software that it preconfigures and sells to server resellers and systems integrators. The obvious question is this: Is Intel trying to bypass the vendor-controlled server channel, which is dominated by Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and IBM, or take a bite out of the so-called white box generic server market? There are thousands of low-volume vendors worldwide who sell bare-bones, low-cost servers that compete rather effectively against the big players. Intel seems to be trying to target these companies, which often use non-Intel components, while at the same time trying to attract them to its server building blocks. The strategy could just work.

Intel has announced four server boards and few complete server configurations, all based on its most recent Pentium 4 and Pentium 4 Xeon processors.

The Intel Server Board SE7500WW2 uses Intel's E7500 chipset and the Xeon DP flavor of Pentium 4 processor (formerly known as "Prestonia") running at 2.4 GHz. It is a two-way capable machine that has dual onboard Gigabit Ethernet links, dual integrated SCSI or ATA RAID controllers, and the Intel Server Management 5.1 system management program. Intel says that this board is aimed at Internet infrastructure jobs like firewall, email, and streaming media and at high-performance computing clusters for technical workloads. This board plugs into the Intel Server Chassis SR1300, which is a rack-mounted chassis with a 1U form factor and support for three disk drives, and the Intel Server Chassis SR2300, which is a 2U form factor box with room for six PCI slots and seven 72 GB disks (504 GB total capacity).

The Intel Server Board SE7500CW2 uses the same 2.4 GHz Xeon DP processors and E7500 chipsets, but includes support for dual 10/100 Mbit Ethernet links, an ATA RAID disk controller, and Intel's LANDesk Client Manager 6 software. This board plugs into Intel's Server Chassis SC5200, which is offered as a tower server or a 5U rack-mounted chassis and which supports up to 10 hot-plug disks for a total of 720 GB of disk space. This machine is aimed more at entry and midrange commercial server users, who do not need the fastest network links available, but who generally need lots of storage room. This board will also, says Intel, plug into third-party white boxes.

The Intel Server Board SHG2 uses the 2.4 GHz Xeon DP processors and employs ServerWorks' GC-LE chipset, which supports one 10/100 Mbit Ethernet and one Gigabit Ethernet link, a dual channel SCSI disk controller, and Intel's Server Management 5.0 software. This board plugs into the Server Chassis SC5200 and third party boxes, too.

The Intel Entry Server Board S845WD1-E is a component for building an entry tower or 1U rack-mounted server that uses Intel's Pentium 4 "Williamette" desktop processors and its 845E chipset. This board plugs into the SC5200 and third party chassis, and offers dual integrated 10/100 Mbit Ethernet links, an integrated ATA RAID disk controller, and hardware-based server monitoring.

Finally, Intel is offering two configurations of complete servers that use its "Foster" Pentium 4 Xeon MP processors. The Intel Server Platform SRSH4 is a core midrange server that uses ServerWorks' GC-HE chipset; it comes in a 4U rack-mounted chassis and can support up to four Xeon MP processors. This machine will support up to 24 GB of main memory, has a dual-channel SCSI disk controller, one 10/100 Mbit Ethernet link, one Gigabit Ethernet link, and five PCI buses that also support PCI-X peripherals. The Intel Server Platform SPSH4 machine is essentially the same, only it comes in a more capacious 7U form-factor tower chassis. Intel is apparently not offering these 4U or 7U chassis as standalone products that vendors can purchase separately.

Sometime later this year, Intel is expected to ship compete servers based on the "McKinley" Itanium 2 processors as well as a more diversified entry server product line.

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