Stratus Takes Orders For New Entry-Level ServersStratus Takes Orders For New Entry-Level Servers

Stratus Technologies Inc. on Monday will introduce its first family of entry-level fault-tolerant servers, with a price of $10,000 per server in volumes of 100 or greater.

"There's no excuse now for not having fault-tolerant capabilities on any system," says Denny Lane, director of product marketing and management for Stratus.

"This now positions us with a whole portfolio of products ranging from the big four-way systems for the heart of the data center, to the mid-range, and now to compete directly against lower availability solutions like low-end clusters."

The new ftServer W Series 2300 servers provide 99.999% uptime reliability, with single-unit pricing starting at $13,000 to $15,000, depending on configuration, Lane says.

The new server line is suitable for large, decentralized deployments at remote facilities where high-level system management is desirable, such as distribution centers, warehouses, branch offices, and retail-chain stores, he says, as well as public-safety dispatch centers and small-to-midsize municipalities.

The W Series 2300 is the first to use Stratus' new Virtual Technician module. The remote-access adapter, with its own power and network connections, is an out-of-band system-management processor, Lane says. Regardless of the server's operational status, the feature enables a service engineer to perform advance remote diagnosis, troubleshooting, and remediation.

The server uses a 3-GHz Xeon processor, dual modular redundancy, SATA storage supporting six internal disks, 240 Gbytes of internal storage, and Windows 2003.

Stratus will begin taking orders for the W Series 2300 servers today, with initial shipments scheduled for November.