HP Integrity rx2620-2

The Itanium marketplace is always a topic for heated debate. But it's safe to say that with IBM not currently moving forward with the platform, it's very much up to HP to keep the dream alive. It already has about a 70 per cent market share, and the expanded Integrity range will no doubt increase this. The primary focus of Integrity is as an RISC replacement for true 64-bit applications such as HPC, clustering and data modelling. If the rx2620-2 is anything to go by, build quality, expansion and management capabilities are extremely good, and we can certainly see this model appealing to any organisation that runs big 64-bit database applications. Its relatively poor storage capacity and ageing chipset make it look a bit long in the tooth, though.

Author: Dave Mitchell