HP is unveiling the fourth generation of its blade PC line and bundling the devices with Citrix XenDesktop 3 virtualisation software.
The HP BladeSystem bc2800 and bc2200, due out in March, sit inside the data center letting users connect to them from any location and device, whether it be a thin client, laptop or regular desktop. Unlike a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) model in which multiple virtual machines are contained on a single server, each blade PC can only serve one user at a time. But 280 of them can fit into a single rack, and client virtualisation software helps deliver benefits related to security, availability, management and flexibility, according to HP.
The HP bc2200 uses a single-core AMD Athlon 64 processor, while the bc2800 is based on a dual-core AMD Turion processor. Both blades are preinstalled with Windows Vista Business edition and support additional Windows operating systems and Linux.