SGI Announces Origin 400 Workgroup Blade Platform [UPDATED]

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Last week, John West had a peek at a new SGI product via an accidental RSS headline.  Well, he was right.  SGI today announced the official release of the Octane Origin 400 platform.  According to the release, its “an integrated workgroup blade system that features compute and storage area network (SAN) storage functionality, making it ideal for remote offices and small- and medium-sized enterprises.”

Origin 400 is a strong addition to our channel product portfolio and gives our partners an innovative, channel-focused product to help drive maximum value,” said Tony Carrozza, senior vice president of worldwide sales at SGI. “Origin 400 establishes a new bar for performance, manageability and ease-of-use as small- and medium-sized enterprises struggle to keep pace with increasingly complex IT infrastructures.”

We are seeing a strong demand for blade systems that incorporate a mix of server and storage capabilities for departmental environments,” said Jed Scaramella, senior research analyst, servers, IDC. “SGI’s new Origin 400 offering will not only help SGI expand further into the business computing market, but will be vital for resellers that serve small- to medium-sized enterprise markets.”

From the looks of the release, its being marketed directly to traditional IT customers [likely from the Rackable company pedigree].  From the hardware perspective, the blade system supports up to 6 dual socket blade servers.  Each machine will support the newly minted 6-core 5600 series Intel silicon.  This means you can get up to 72 cores into a single chassis.  The product website also mentions redundant ethernet switch modules, each with ten externally accessible GigE ports.  There is no mention for 10GbE or Infiniband.

The blade market is a tough one.  HP, IBM and Dell have a long history in building successful blade platforms.  However, SGI seems to be determined to expand their market share in traditional IT environments.  For more info, check out the product website here.

[Updated 03162010 to correct an error in the product name.]