Sequent Computer Systems Inc says the ability to run Unix and Windows NT in separate domains on a single NUMA-Q 2000 server is an interesting marketing story, although its hasn’t actually won any takers for the configuration which it calls MetaServer yet. It’s currently working to improve MetaServer’s electronics so that the Unix or NT components can be can be grown at the expense of the other. It doesn’t make much of Unisys Corp’s planned 32-way NT beast, claiming it demonstrated Windows NT running on one of the 32-way WinServer systems it OEMed from Tricord Systems Inc more than two years ago. It’s all very well getting the stuff to work, but what can you use it for? it asks. Despite all the RAS hype the Unix vendors have been giving their Unix enterprise server products, Meta Group believes Unix capabilities are still 18-24 months behind those of MVS. Meantime, we’ve been hearing the same kinds of noise out of Sequent suggesting that it’s gone cool on Solaris x86 as its 64- bit Unix choice. When we spoke to Sequent last week it emphasized that its 32-bit Dynix/ptx and clustering file system capabilities could be as easily applied to other 64-bit Unixes as easily as Sun’s.
