Round Rock, Texas - (The Hosting News) - June 8, 2006 - Dell has released its ninth-generation PowerEdge servers featuring, according to the company, the most comprehensive enhancements ever, in an effort to drive more complete and cost-effective enterprise technologies across a variety of information-technology environments.

The new PowerEdge servers will integrate high-performance Intel Xeon 5100 series processors that lower power consumption(1) and advances in memory technology with an enhanced industrial design to give customers cutting-edge capabilities without increased complexity or cost.

Brad Anderson, Senior Vice President of Dell Product Group commented, ''Dell continues its laser focus on delivering exceptional value, performance and investment protection for customers. No other company can exceed our ability to combine customer feedback with the latest industry-standard technology to deliver complete enterprise offerings. Our ninth-generation servers deliver on the first in a series of steps Dell is taking to drive reduced complexity and simplified operations for our customers.''

The Dell PowerEdge 1950, 2900 and 2950 servers and Dell PowerEdge 1955 blade server are designed to dramatically boost performance. The new Dell PowerEdge servers powered by Intel Xeon 5100 series processors are designed to deliver up to a 152 percent performance increase over the previous generation 2U Dell PowerEdge server.(2)

The new server portfolio are also designed to lower power consumption by up to 25 percent, providing an increase in performance per watt of electricity of up to 169 percent and addressing customer requirements to reduce the cost and environmental impact of data center power demands.(1)

Other features include enhanced performance and reliability through:

• Intel dual-core Xeon 5100 series processors, which significantly increase performance while reducing power requirements
• Fully buffered DIMMs that provide a new memory interface for faster data transmission, plus improved signal integrity and error detection
• SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) hard drives for faster, more reliable data transmission and reduced thermal output
• TCP/IP Offload Engine, which helps reduce traffic on a host processor to enhance system performance
• Enhanced virtualization technology for improved performance, management and utilization in virtualized workloads such as VMware ESX, Microsoft Virtual Server or Xen
• PCI-Express I/O, which delivers high-performance Ethernet, RAID, InfiniBand and Fibre Channel interconnect while providing investment protection for future technologies

• Industry-first programmable LCD that enables quick and easy visual diagnosis of server faults
• Individually labeled hard drives that provide quick identification of the technology, capacity and speed
• Standardized color coding and cabling that make PowerEdge servers easier to manage and service today and with future generations
• Draw-latch design for tool-less access to server components
• The only server vendor that provides one system image (i.e., BIOS, drivers, operating systems and applications) to manage three servers: PowerEdge 1950, 2950 and 2900
• ImageWatch(TM), a Dell service that helps customers proactively manage the number of changes to system images, available in a block-release format further reducing the amount of image changes a customer has to manage.

• DRAC5 (Dell Remote Access Controller) for improved performance in secure remote management
• Integrated hardware and software management with partner applications like Altiris Server Management Suite, Microsoft SMS and MOM, and Novell ZENworks Linux Management - Dell Edition, providing single console management of enterprise resources
• Dell OpenManage Connections, which allows comprehensive hardware monitoring within industry management frameworks
• IMPI 2.0 and SMASH, which deliver simplified management capabilities via a standardized management infrastructure
• Improved Linux Integration with full support for Novell SuSE Linux SLES9
• Improved integration between Dell OpenManage and VMware ESX 3.0, allowing simplified monitoring for customers' hardware devices dedicated to virtual machines