From the company that brought you the HP iPod, now witness the invincible server. HP is showing off the features on their "StorageWorks XP12000 Disk Array", which claims to offer resilient service - whatever happens. To demonstrate invincibility, HP decided to ponder realistic scenarios for data centers (
Note - not gimmicky, headline friendly PR stunts) and came up with the idea of doing a bulletproof test - shooting a 308-caliber bullet at one of the hard drives.
The HP press page boldly announces that "
To pass the bulletproof test, the XP must continue streaming video while a bullet passes through the disk array and shatters a fish tank behind it. "The XP team took the standard customer video to a whole new level," says Mike Sunseri, writer and director at Media Agents. "
We have one chance to get it right.""
Blip, blip, blip....
Get back Jack! They"re rack mounted! 23:59... 00:00....
We"d love to tell you that HP"s servers are in fact bullet proof, but we can"t. We"d have to be able to watch their video to do that (presumably from a HP media server like the one being advertised). Their marketing might be bold, but their web connection certainly is not. This writer"s pulling down a mighty 1.8kb/s - nothing to write home about, but certainly something to write on Neowin about.
We don"t know much about shooting up servers, and suspect that most of our readers do not either. However, we reckon that it wouldn"t take much to put a server out of action, and imagine the HP team took some rather choosy shots. But who knows. We think HP might have missed the point a little with this marketing gimmick. We"ll update you
if when the video downloads.
Update : Thanks to m0use for posting a link to a mirror; readers will be relieved to know that the server made it, and kept on streaming. You"ll be even more amused to know that of the 2:58 mins long video, a good
minute at the end is disclaimer. In case you thought shooting your server was a good idea.