News

Unisys Updates Server Management Software

• By Scott Bekker
• March 25, 2003

Unisys this week introduced updated software for self-management and self-healing of its massive ES7000 Windows servers, and also showed off add-on modules for easing server consolidation and resource management.

Server Sentinel 2.0 comes standard with Unisys' 32-processor-capable ES7000 systems. The new Application Sentinel modules sell for $1,000 per processor.

"The industry has recognized the future promise and benefits of self-management software and Unisys is delivering viable, interoperable self-managing solutions today," says Jon Burns, director of the Unisys Sentinel program. "Even if you look at the original ES7000s, we've made quantum leaps compared to ourselves and quantum leaps times five compared to our competition."

The ES7000 was the first greater-than-eight-processor server built for Windows 2000 and Intel Xeon and Itanium processors. When the ES7000s began shipping in early 2000, they came with some resource management software for partitioning the hardware to support multiple operating systems. About 15 months after the ES7000 release, Unisys updated that resource management software with Server Sentinel 1.0.

The 2.0 version ships with more self-management, self-healing and security functionality. New features include cluster verification and predictive failover capabilities, an enhanced GUI, service processor intrusion detection, a firewall and system-level vulnerability assessment.

The Application Sentinel modules include one for resource management, one for SQL Server and one for server consolidation. Unisys partnered with NetIQ for some technologies in the new Sentinel products.