Servers carry two brands, one contact

Under a partnership announced Monday, Micron Electronics Inc. and Hewlett-Packard

Co. will offer a line of co-branded servers called micronpc.com HP NetServer.

In choosing HP, Micron sought to provide customers with a comprehensive

server solution that features a single point of contact.

"We believe this is a great opportunity to offer a much broader product

line than we had before in terms of depth and peripheral support, especially

in the government space," said Robert Meissner, director of product marketing

for Micron. Meissner explained that loyal Micron customers have been urging

the company to expand its server offerings.

Meissner said that of the top-tier server vendors in the market, "What

distinguished HP from the crowd was their management solution," particularly

HP Open View and HP Top Tools.

The server line consists of three new machines that launched Monday

and two more that will launch in November and December. All five will replace

current Micron NetFrame servers, which will continue to be available for

150 to 180 days from now. Support for the current products will continue

for three years and their warranties will be fully supported.

The servers are available directly from micronpc.com. Micron configures

the machines to order and provides technical support. If Micron can't solve

a customer's problem, it shifts the call to HP, which will in turn dispatch

a Unisys field service representative if necessary. However, Micron remains

the single point of contact for the customer.

The high-end server in the line — the HP NetServer LH6000 — replaces

the NetFrame 6200 and features six-way Intel Corp. Pentium III Xeon processors,

8G of memory capacity, 12 hot-swap drive bays and four hot-plug PCI slots.

Meissner said the pricing of the new systems will be "right in line" with

other servers on the market.

Future solutions from the Micron and HP partnership include clustering,

storage-area networks, a terminal server solution and Linux support.