IBM Unveils Dual-Core Small Business Servers

IBM is adding faster hot-swappable hard drives and redundant power supplies to its low-end server products for small and medium businesses, the company is expected to announce Tuesday.

Customers will also be able to order the new x100, x206m, and x306m with Intel's forthcoming dual-core Xeon processors, said Stuart McRae, worldwide marketing manager for xSeries servers and workstations. All three models are designed to use a single processor for simple server tasks such as file serving or Web hosting, he said.

Pricing, Availability

However, even smaller businesses are concerned about hardware outages if they rely on their Web site for income. IBM's new x206 and x306 servers should help keep those businesses running with features such as Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) hard drives and power supplies that can be removed and replaced while the server is running, McRae said. Not all configurations of the new model feature the hot-swapping capability.

Previously, in order to get those types of features, IBM customers would have to upgrade to a more expensive model, but the company is now bringing those capabilities down to lower-priced systems, McRae said. Pricing for the x206m starts at $699, while the x306m starts at $1089. Both models will be available to order on October 4 and will ship by mid-month.

The company also plans to introduce the x100 for the most basic serving tasks, McRae said. The x100 starts at $599 and can be ordered immediately from IBM's Web site.

Should they choose, IBM's customers can order their new servers with dual-core Xeon processors, which cram two independent processing cores into a single piece of silicon. Intel plans to release the dual-core Xeons in coming weeks, ahead of the target it set for itself earlier this year but still well behind rival Advanced Micro Devices' dual-core Opteron server processors, which were released in April.