HP Announces New Entry-level Enterprise Servers with Aggressive Price/Performance and Advanced Functionality; HP 9000 D-class Enterprise Servers Offer Customers Broader Selection, Higher Internet Performance and Lower Prices For Entry-level Models

Business Wire, Jan 14, 1997

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 14, 1997--In an aggressive move to provide customers with a wider and stronger range of entry-level choices for its market-leading UNIX(R) system enterprise servers, Hewlett-Packard Company today introduced two new performance package options for the HP 9000 D-class Enterprise Server family. HP also slashed prices on its current entry-level D-class models.

The new D-class Enterprise Servers, Models D330, D320, D230 and D220, are powered by 160MHz and 132MHz versions of HP's PA-7300LC processor. These uniprocessor servers provide up to 50 percent price/performance improvement over their D-class predecessors and offer excellent Internet performance at attractive prices.

Priced under $8,900, the new HP 9000 Model D220 establishes the most aggressive entry-level price point into the new set of PA-7300LC-based D-class servers. The Model D220 features the following: -0-

-- aggressive entry-level price point;

-- 132MHz PA-7300LC PA-RISC(1) processor with 128KB primary

cache;

-- competitive entry-level OLTP and Internet performance;

-- optional -- and inexpensive -- 1MB secondary cache upgrade,

which boosts performance by 30 percent for most applications;

and

-- investment protection and expansion upgrade options, including

in-box upgrades to record-setting 64-bit PA-8000 based D-class

Enterprise Servers.

The new HP 9000 Model D330, with pricing beginning under $16,700, is the most powerful and configurable of the new HP 9000 D-class Enterprise Server family members. The model D330 features the following:

-- 160MHz PA-7300LC PA-RISC processor;

-- standard 128KB primary and 1MB secondary cache;

-- 500 SPECweb96(2) Internet performance;

-- more than 60 percent better Internet performance than Sun's

UE1 model 170;

-- standard hot-swap disks for increased data availability,

serviceability and security; and

-- highly configurable memory-, disk- and I/O-upgrade options,

including board upgrades to powerful PA-8000 CPUs.

HP also aggressively reduced prices on current HP 9000 Models D210 and D310. Priced under $6,900, 20 percent lower than its predecessor, the D200, the D210 creates a new entry price into the D-class family, while providing 25 percent better performance.

"I am excited by the 50 percent performance improvement that the D330 will bring us over the D350/one-way," said Dana Nielsen, director of IT Computing Services for Northwestern University. "In our ever-growing Internet environment, this kind of performance boost for a Web server is great news, and the aggressive pricing makes it extremely attractive."

"With today's rollout of new, aggressively priced D-class servers, customers are well-positioned to take advantage of the scaleability and architectural longevity we offer with our systems -- which are easily upgradeable to the higher-performing, 64-bit PA-8000 processor," said Carol Mills, general manager of HP's Enterprise Systems Division. "With this stronger range of entry-level enterprise servers, HP now offers more choices for customers, and the three-year, next-day, on-site warranty that comes standard with all D-class servers provides outstanding cost of ownership."

The HP 9000 D-class Enterprise Servers are ideal as business-ready Internet servers when purchased with the HP Domain Business Suite software. The Domain package, announced in November 1996, integrates industry-leading HP OpenView management, Netscape Suite Spot and HP OpenMail messaging applications. It features standard Internet capability, expansive configuration options and file-serving capabilities.

In addition to Internet functionality, the new servers also are well-suited for commercial and technical enterprise environments in small to medium-sized businesses, workgroups, small departments in corporations and replicated sites. Common applications for these new servers include database- and applications-processing, messaging, workgroup file management and product-data management.

The new servers support maximum configurations of 1GB of memory, 20GB of internal hot-swap disk storage, 5TB of external disk storage, eight expansion slots and an aggregate I/O bandwidth of 160MB per second. As with the entire line of HP 9000 D-class Enterprise Servers, the new servers include the advanced high-availability features associated with larger systems, including on-line hot-plugging of internal disks. They are fully binary-compatible with all other HP 9000 Enterprise Servers, giving customers access to more than 12,000 HP-UX(3) applications.

All the new D-class servers are board-upgradeable to the top of the D-class family, the Model D370, which is powered by up to two 64-bit PA-8000 processors. With benchmark results of 5,822 tpmC at $148/tpmC, the Model D370/two way is the highest-performing entry-level RISC UNIX system server on the market. The Model D370 also provides leadership SPECweb96 performance at 1,061 operations per second and an exceptional Laddis-file-server result of 3,945 (submitted for review). This all adds up to outstanding scaleability and investment protection for all models of the HP 9000 D-class Enterprise Server family.