Feb, 2002 : RLX Announces Intel-Powered ServerBlade 800i

📅 February 21, 2002 - RLX Technologies Inc. (rlxtechnologies.com), the amanufacturer of blade servers for Web serving and scale-out computing, has announced its RLX ServerBlade 800i. Distancing itself from the competition, the ServerBlade 800i features a new,high-performance architecture built around a low-voltage 800 MHz Intel Mobile Pentium III with up to 1 GB of DDR RAM.

The ServerBlade 800i maintains RLX's position as the recognized leader inblade-server computing. Comparisons by RLX with a leading competitor showedServerBlade 800i had 800% greater performance per rack, 600% greater densityper rack, 35% greater performance per blade, 70% greater systemprice/performance, 20% higher density and 24% lower acquisition cost, thecompany says.
RLX also announced the RLX Control Tower Blade 2 server management andsoftware provisioning system. Administrators can use it to remotely monitor,control and provision hundreds of ServerBlades in multiple chassis or racks,each running Microsoft Windows 2000 or Red Hat Linux. The ServerBlade 800iis being officially unveiled at the Spring 2002 Intel Developer Forum, whereRLX offers a free seminar, "ServerBlades in Scale-Out ComputingArchitectures."
"Systems based on low-voltage Intel Pentium III processors offer theindustry's top server blade performance at very low power levels forhigh-node-density systems," said Richard Dracott, director of IntelEnterprise Platforms marketing. "IT managers need an open design thatsupports standard applications and interoperability with current systems,and RLX's new Intel-based systems deliver that flexibility."
"Our goal was creating a ServerBlade with the highest performance possiblewithout diminishing the recognized RLX position as leader in serverdensity," explains Bob Van Steenberg, CTO at RLX. "That's why theServerBlade 800i combines superior performance, low power consumption andimpressive density." An RLX System 300ex chassis holds 24 ServerBlade 800iunits in a single 3U chassis. This density achievement packs 336 independentservers into a single 42U rack, delivering 268,800 MHz, over 27 terabytes ofdisk storage, and 366 gigabytes of DDR memory.
Clustering applications is a growing area for the ServerBlade 800i. "TheIntel-based RLX ServerBlade 800i provides an outstanding platform for ourscale-out computing clusters," says Dr. Wu Feng, team leader of Radiantat Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. "We built an RLX cluster and got our code running in less than three hours,compared with the several days required by previous cluster efforts. RLXsaves us eight times the floor space, and the ServerBlade 800i shoulddramatically improve our floating-point performance." Similar RLX systemsare delivering results in the bioinformatic and pharmaceutical sectors, suchas BLAST, created by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, andis a popular technique for locating specific patterns in huge DNA andprotein databases.
ServerBlade 800i pricing begins at $1,449, including 256 MB of DDR RAM andone 20 GB hard disk drive. Configurations with up to 1 GB of DDR RAM and upto two 20 GB or 40 GB hard disk drives are available. The RLX System 100exchassis holding up to six blades in 1U is $1,999. An RLX 300ex chassisholding up to 24 blades in a 3U rack is $3,299. Every RLX server system isbuilt to order.