Industry-standard server solutions architectures

Executive summary HP, Microsoft, and Intel ® have joined forces to demonstrate superior performance and scalability for the Windows enterprise data center. New options are available that bring greater scalability and performance to applications through the introduction of the 64-bit Intel Itanium ® architecture for industry-standard platforms; Windows Server 2003, which supports up to 64 Intel Itanium processors; and HP Integrity Superdome servers, which are scalable to 64 Intel Itanium processors. As with any newly evolving technology, it is important for customers to understand how to select the best solution for their business needs. To help customers make that decision, this paper examines some of the differences between IA-32 and the new Intel Itanium architecture. The paper focuses on the key factors for successful Itanium-based solution deployment, including operating system and application availability and performance advantages. As the needs of Windows customers grow beyond the capabilities of IA-32, customers increasingly have the opportunity to incorporate additional Windows performance and scalability into their data center by adding Itanium 2-based servers running Windows Server 2003 and 64-bit applications. HP has had a 10-year partnership with Intel to develop the Intel Itanium architecture, and a 20-year partnership with Microsoft to optimize Windows for IA-32 and now Itanium 2-based servers. These partnerships have effectively positioned HP as the vendor of choice for enterprise Windows solutions—whether they are based on IA-32 or Intel Itanium architecture.