Sequent Enables Scalability, Server Consolidation With Microsoft Windows 2000 Data Center Server

Business Wire, May 21, 1999

DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 21, 1999--

Sequent Computer Systems, Inc., the leader in Intel-based data center solutions, today announced it has jointly developed a workload management tool with Microsoft Corp., to be incorporated in Windows 2000 Data Center Server.

The tool, called Process Control, enables customers to achieve better operational control and to consolidate multiple applications on a single server for lower cost of operations. Process Control was announced and demonstrated today as part of a keynote address by Brian Valentine, vice president of Microsoft's Business Enterprise Division at the Tech Ed-99 Conference.

An integrated part of the Windows 2000 Data Center Server operating system, Process Control enables an administrator to manage multiple applications across available system resources. Process Control utilizes Microsoft's new underlying Job Object technology to manage application process affinities with specific system resources. Sequent developed the Process Control technology to meet customer requirements for high availability, performance optimization and manageability in their core data center environments.

"Microsoft is thrilled to collaborate with Sequent on the development of the Process Control Tool, which will be part of Windows 2000 Data Center Server," said Edmund Muth, group product manager at Microsoft Corp. "Using the Windows 2000 Job Object infrastructure, the Process Control Tool makes it straightforward for system managers to control the resources assigned to heterogeneous enterprise workloads hosted on large, powerful SMP servers in the data center. Customers will benefit from this technology both in server consolidation projects, and in settings where there are service level agreements in force with clients, and where resources need to be assigned to specific workloads and applications."

Jeff Pancottine, vice president, global marketing at Sequent, said: "Windows 2000 Data Center Server allows customers to take advantage of the expertise that Sequent brings to highly scalable data center class systems. Sequent is excited about the joint development we have been able to do with Microsoft that resulted in the Process Control feature. We look forward to expanding on that collaboration in the future to ensure we exceed customer expectations in key business critical areas like e-commerce and customer relationship management."

Tech Ed-99 Demonstration

At Tech Ed-99, Microsoft and Sequent demonstrated the new Process Control utility and its ability to consolidate multiple applications running on Windows 2000 Data Center Server. The demonstration was conducted on a prototype Intel Pentium III Xeon eight processor server with 8GB of main memory. In addition, Microsoft showed on the same hardware the ability to run multiple instances of Microsoft SQL Server using the new greater than 4GB Physical Address Extensions (PAE) kernel support available in Windows 2000 Data Center Server. These demonstrations showed some of the key features being incorporated into Microsoft Windows 2000 Data Center Server to take advantage of large memory, management tools, and enterprise class hardware to consolidate workloads.

Process Control

Process Control will be a standard function of Microsoft Windows 2000 Data Center Server. Process Control utilizes the Windows 2000 Job Object technology to give a system administrator the ability to assign system resources to specific applications, and finely tune the resources used by those applications, whether or not they were designed to operate in a data center environment.

This ability to map processes to processors becomes increasingly important as servers are consolidated and one server runs multiple applications.

About Microsoft Windows 2000 Data Center Server

Windows 2000 Data Center Server is a specialized high-end version of Windows 2000 Server, supporting up to 32-way SMP and up to 64 GB of physical memory. Like Windows 2000 Advanced Server, it provides both clustering and load balancing services as standard features. In addition, Windows 2000 Data Center Server is optimal for large data warehouses, econometric analysis, large-scale simulations in science and engineering, online transaction processing, server consolidation projects, and for large-scale ISPs and Web-site hosting.

About Sequent and Microsoft in the Data Center

Sequent is a major proponent of delivering Microsoft's rich application environment and price/performance into the data center. Sequent provides solutions based on its NUMACenter platform and services for organizations deploying large-scale Microsoft NT-based applications. The Intel-based NUMACenter combines Sequent technology, including interconnects, its high availability Storage Area Network and Advanced Detection Availability Manager (ADAM) in an integrated framework with best in class middleware, databases, storage, back-up and management tools. NUMACenter is a framework through which customers can quickly deploy enterprise Windows NT-based applications and add new capacity and functionality over time, to protect their infrastructure investment.