New platforms are supposed to provide new speed for the e3000 community, but the introduction of the N-Class and A-Class systems at the Solutions Symposium showed development speed has moved into the 3000 labs, too. Officials from the Commercial Systems Division (CSY) said HP will be offering support for large files in the first release of 7.0, another improvement in the release schedule.

General Manager Winston Prather and platform planning manager Dave Snow briefed the 200 attendees at the Symposium for more than an hour on the system and software introductions. The large files support was supposed to be delayed to the Express 1 7.0 release, a concession to the extra resources CSY used to get the A-Class systems into the market six months ahead of schedule. Snow said the large-files work would arrive with the first shipments of the ultra-fast systems, now set for March.

“I was told yesterday we’ve completed the testing, so we’ll declare victory on the file sizes being limited to 4 Gb,” Snow said. “We’ll have the very large files, which go up to 128Gb in size, in place for 7.0.” Large file support becomes a key factor in very large databases, especially those used by the HBOC/Amisys application sites. Sites hungry for performance appear to be some of the better prospects for early adoption of the N-Class servers.

Not all of the features for the N-Class and A-Class servers have been fully tested. The core IO cards which are integrated into the system won’t be supported at first rollout, but the delay will result in some free equipment for early buyers of the systems. HP said it will be giving away a free 100/10-Base T LAN card with each system it sells, to provide network connectivity for the systems

“Those early orders will get a free LAN card,” Snow said. “You get to keep the card, and we’ll activate the core IO connection also.”

The card does take up a full slot, but customers can keep it even after HP starts supporting the integrated LAN card with the 7.0 Express 1 release. The 7.0 release of MPE/iX also offers free networking software for 100/10-Base T, software which must be a purchased option for MPE/iX 6.5 and earlier.