Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens Computers PRIMEPOWER Enterprise Servers
© 2003 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.
DPRO-97941
17 April 2003
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Table 2: High-Availability Features: PRIMEPOWER XA Enterprise Servers (900,1500
and 2500)
(1) System boards (containing CPUs, memory and I/O buses) can be hot-swapped using the Dynamic
Reconfiguration (DR) utility to remove idle boards from or add new boards to a partition. DR for system
boards requires Solaris 8.
Table 3: PRIMEPOWER Clustering Software
Name/Release
PRIMECLUSTER/4.0 (1)
No. of Nodes
Supported
Up to 64
Type(s) of Clustering
Failover, load balancing or parallel database (Oracle9i RAC)
Interconnects
Supported
Gigabit Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Fibre Channel-Arbitrated Loop, Small Computer
Systems Interface (SCSI)
Failover Between
Partitions
Yes (requires external connections)
Failover Between
Heterogeneous
Configurations
Yes
Cluster-Wide File
System
No
Consolidated
Management Station
Yes
Disaster Recovery
Support
Optional: With third-party fiber-optic components and repeaters, clusters can be
implemented up to distances of 150 km on a project-specific basis.
(1) The PRIMEPOWER servers are also supported in the Veritas Cluster software, which allows mixed
PRIMEPOWER and Sun clusters.
Analysis
The PRIMEPOWER servers are binary compatible with the SPARC International “standard” for SPARC
processors and run Sun’s Solaris operating system. This means they will run any of the applications
written for Sun’s UltraSPARC/Solaris servers. Fujitsu claims they offer greater scalability and higher levels
of RAS than not only Sun’s servers, but also other Unix servers. The PRIMEPOWER servers are not as
well known as their Unix counterparts, however, so clients understandably seek additional assurances
about the vendor and the product.
About the Vendor
Although Fujitsu itself and FSC in EMEA are relatively large organizations in revenue terms, the
PRIMEPOWER brand is still relatively new, especially in North America. Indeed, FTSI was not
established until early 2001, even though it was formed in part from the Amdahl organization, which
Fujitsu owned. Fujitsu has in fact been a global player for a number of years and not only owned Amdahl,
but also owned ICL (another mainframe vendor) in Europe, as well as producing a range of computers
from PCs through to mainframes for its home market in Japan. Fujitsu’s revenue for the fiscal year
2001/2002 (year-end 31 March 2002) was $42.6 billion; Fujitsu Siemens revenue was $5.95 billion.
The Fujitsu name and PRIMEPOWER brand are better known in Europe as part of Fujitsu’s joint venture
with Siemens. Both Fujitsu and Siemens had established PC, server and mainframe businesses in EMEA,
which they brought together in 1998 to form FSC. Subsequently, FSC has taken on the responsibility for
