Dell has introduced new products aimed at datacentre virtualisation, including new servers, storage and services to help firms move from consolidation towards more dynamic data centres with better disaster recovery capabilities.

The new PowerEdge R805 and R905 server lines are tailored for virtual workloads, so have larger memories plus expanded I/O and networking compared with standard servers, Dell said. The models optionally support embedded VMware ESXi or Citrix XenServer hypervisors that do away with the need for a host operating system to run virtual machines.

Dell said it has also added support for VMware's Site Recovery Manager to its EqualLogic iSCSI storage array products, and will offer simplification and readiness assessment services to help firms better implement virtualisation in datacentres.

"Over the last 12 to 18 months we've seen a lot of interest around virtualisation solutions," said Hugh Jenkins, EMEA enterprise marketing manager at Dell. He added that many companies have already hit the "first level payback " from consolidating their server infrastructure, and are now looking to move ahead to disaster recovery planning and higher availability of systems.

The new rack-mount servers are based on AMD quad-core and dual-core chips. The R805 is a 2U high 2-socket design with up to 128GB memory, while the R905 is 4U high and supports 4 sockets with up to 256GB memory. Available immediately, prices start at £1,499 for the R805 and £3,989 for the R905.

Jenkins said the new models offered "compelling price and performance" for virtualisation. He claimed the R905 has the best performance of any 4-socket server under VMware's own VMmark bench test, and is the first capable of operating up to 60 virtual machines.

Embedded hypervisors are fitted on an internally mounted Flash SD Card in the R805 and R905. Dell said the hypervisors can be retrofitted to other servers such as the Intel-based R900 series using an internal USB port.

The benefit of such embedded support is that a server can be deployed very quickly, according to Jenkins. "You can be up and running within minutes," he said. Dell also said it will support Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualisation technology for Windows Server 2008, once this is available.