Hardware

As virtualization evolves and new processors delivery more power via 64 bit processing and mutli core technology hardware based virtualization will offer even more benefits. The Itanium processor, co developed by Intel and HP will become the CPU of choice for many Enterprise systems with HP leading the pack. While the power of such processors has traditionally been reserved for UNIX based systems, the Itanium will also support Linux and most importantly Windows. Leveraging hardware based virtualization will now allow organizations to tap into the power of their UNIX based systems and deploy a Linux or Windows partition. This will provide support for Microsoft SQL 2005 or Oracle allowing users to scale SQL applications far beyond what they have been able to do on x86 architecture. Another advantage of this technology is the software licensing, utilizing much more powerful processors means less cpu’s to license from Microsoft or better licensing costs from such vendors as Oracle (1x core vs. 1.5x core). The primary issue facing the Itanium processor is support from software vendors. While the number of vendors supporting the Itanium is growing always check to ensure your application is supported.