Dell’s Sandy Bridge Processors Power Servers Geared at SMB Market

By Erin Monda on Fri, 2011-04-15 09:04

Renting servers just became a more diverse process, thanks to the fact that leading industry manufacturers are beginning to release options that target specific niche areas.

Take Hewlett-Packard (HP) as an example -- it has been on the forefront of wireless printer technology. And Dell, another perennial tech maker, has been working on cornering the server market.

But we’re not just talking about basic, same-old-same-old servers anymore.

With the recent release of Intel’s Xeon E7 Sandy Bridge processors, all of the OEMs are jumping to get the technology incorporated into their own products – and Dell is no exception. The company just released a new line-up of server, storage and network options geared to attract small and medium-sized businesses.

Dell’s PowerEdge T110 and PowerEdge R210 servers come standard with Intel’s much-hyped Sandy Bridge processors, and they are each specifically engineered towards their target purchasing group. The T110 for example, is an entry-level server meant to coax first-time buyers into their first on-premises server. The T110 will have a C202 chipset and will be able to support four full slots of memory with memory stick capacities of up to 8GB. The T110 will also be able to clok speeds up to 1.07GHz.

But the R210 isn’t entirely without its own appeal. It is rack-based and likely to appeal to larger companies looking to branch out their current server infrastructure.

Dell’s director of small business development, Tony Parkinson, shared his thoughts as to why Dell is pursuing this opportunity. He said, "There are still a lot of customers out there who haven't made that first step towards a server.” Parkinson then added, "They're still running--or trying to run--their infrastructure on the desktop. We really want to help them move away from that architecture because it's not scalable, it's got lots of risk in terms of potential downtime, and security is a real concern in those types of environments."

While these particular offerings from Dell can’t really be compared to the Sun M5000 or some of the heavier duty server rentals we offer, we still expect start receiving requests from businesses wanting to try out this technology for their own.