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October 4, 1992

COMPAQ GREATLY EXPANDS ITS SERVER OFFERINGS, ADOPTS SANTA CRUZ UNIX, MPX IN EUROPE

By CBR Staff Writer

Compaq Computer Corp today launches a new line of personal computer servers; the next family of SystemPro servers; and announces a European OEM agreement with the Santa Cruz Operation Inc. The low end systems, ProSignia, come in at UKP1,800 and a fully configured Model 1020 is around UKP6,000. A 32-bit SCSI-2 controller integrated on the system board provides access to a maximum of seven SCSI devices without using an EISA expansion slot. The ProSignia family uses Intel’s 33MHz 80486 processor or the 66MHz 80486DX2 and is available in six models. Standard features include 256Kb cache; upgradability to Intel P5 processors; rapid recovery features; SCSI capacity to 6.3Gb internal storage or 29.4Gb with external additions; IDA-2 capacity to 3Gb; 128Mb RAM; and tape back-up to 10Gb. All models have a three year on site warranty. The model 550 comes with the SCSI-2 controller integrated on the system board and three SCSI hard drives – 330Mb, 550Mb, or 1.05Gb. Also the 32-bit NetFlex Controller supports Ethernet 10Base-T, Ethernet AVI, Token Ring STP and VTP. The model 1020 has fast SCSI-2 and the IDA-2 controller, 32-bit NetFlex and Compaq’s drive array.

Under $1,000 per transaction per second

Other options include the ProLiant storage system, sourced from NCR Corp. It has seven SCSI bays, hot pluggability and the SCSI-2 disk controller. It costs UKP600 and uses drives from Hewlett-Packard Co and Fujitsu Ltd. The 32-bit NetFlex controller is available separately at around UKP200. The 486/33 I/EL, 550 and 1020 are UKP1,800, UKP3,305 and UKP5,500 respectively. In the same order, the 80486DX/2 models are UKP2,400, UKP4,000 and UKP6,100. The SystemPro/XL servers, now supporting up to four microprocessers, come in four models and standard features include the 50MHz 80486 with 256Kb ServerCache-2. The InFlex architecture integrates a 64-bit processer bus, 128-bit memory bus and 32-bit EISA bus. The transfer rate between the processer and memory bus is 267M-bytes per second and a data flow manager takes data from the 33M-bytes per second EISA bus and bursts it into memory at full speed. The system offers 16Mb to 512Mb memory with Error Correcting Code and supports four ProLiant external storage systems for a total of 29Gb – available early 1993 for UKP3,000. The disk controller is either IDA-2 or fast SCSI-2, and the first supports RAID levels 5, 4 and 1. Fault tolerance includes prevention and recovery features, and Compaq will replace disk drives and memory – under warranty – when the system indicates degradation of performance or impending problems. The model 1020 with a drive array costs UKP10,900, about UKP1,000 cheaper than the original SystemPro, and the 1Gb SCSI version is UKP9,300. All are upgradeable to P5 and beyond. Compaq’s agreement with Santa Cruz Operation means that the company is offering Santa Cruz Unix, and a range of networking functions and Santa Cruz MPX for multiprocessing. The operating systems are available on CD-ROM or tape, said to cut installation time by several hours. The company is bullish about the new ranges, saying that it is planning to manufacture double its demand forecasts in order to avoid backlogs – although previous problems component quality created a backlog of demand that won’t be fully resolved until the end of the month.Benchmarks indicate that the top-end systems perform at 185 transactions per second at a cost of $800 per tps. Breaking the $1,000 barrier is said to undercut IBM Corp, Sun Microsystems Inc and Data General Corp.

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