Huawei's breakthrough 32-socket server unleashed in Middle East

High performance KunLun Server, in collaboration with SAP, Intel, SUSE, makes Middle East debut; sets new standards in delivery of mission-critical enterprise computing to regional enterprises

Dubai, UAE, October 19, 2016:   Regional businesses can finally feel the power of Huawei’s most advanced enterprise server, after the leading ICT provider unveiled its KunLun server for the Middle East at GITEX today. 

The KunLun 9032 is one of just two 32-socket servers available in the market, focusing on mission-critical computing, vital for governments and private enterprises pioneering smart and safe cities, such as Dubai. 

With its most advanced server to date, brought to fruition with industry leaders SAP, Intel, SUSE, and others, Huawei has reaffirmed its commitment to the region and its most ambitious governments. 

“Huawei is proud to have the regional launch of its most advanced server yet, the KunLun 9032, which was designed to enable enterprises to gain the highest performance and reliability possible for mission-critical computing that large enterprises in the Middle East depend on,” said David Shi, vice president of solution sales & marketing at Huawei Enterprise Middle East. “The server is designed to deliver uninterrupted uptime to regional enterprises where server downtime can cause irreparable damage to reputation and revenue, for organizations.”

The most forward-thinking governments experience the highest risk, financially, when it comes to server failure, given the speed and performance of their technologies. For example, booming tourism industries, like those in the GCC, rely heavily on online payment gateways. Downtime of just one hour on an online payment gateway can cost a business in excess of three million dirhams. 

Reputation, financials, and security are three fundamental areas in today’s market that businesses and governments need to protect, and are the three areas most at risk when servers fail. The KunLun server is a result of Huawei’s strategy to aggressively address these concerns, and demonstrate cooperative, open ecosystems that deliver industry-leading innovations.

The new server is powered by Intel® Xeon® E7 v4 series central processing units (CPUs) and supports mainstream databases such as SAP HANA®; middleware; and Operating Systems (OS) including Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Windows Server.

Incorporating non-RISC x86 processors, KunLun is born open. Huawei aims to build a KunLun partner alliance where Huawei joins hands with chip, operating system, database, and ISV software vendors to enable customers to move their mission critical platforms to open architectures. KunLun not only helps customers get rid of closed architectures but also reduce TCO and build open, flexible, and innovative platforms for customers.

“From financial transactions, to public safety and security, regional organizations have a growing need for mission-critical servers which form the backbone of any large IT infrastructure, with downtime resulting in potential loss or danger,” said Shi. “To put this into real-world context, many of today’s security violations or breaches worldwide occur during an unforeseen interruption in server availability. The KunLun server has been designed to eliminate this interruption, even when maintenance is being carried out, to ensure service continuity across the enterprise,” he added.

Speaking about the KunLun server, Gergi Abboud, Managing Director, SAP Gulf, North Africa, Levant and Pakistan said, “Through close collaboration, SAP and Huawei have delivered industry-leading innovations to meet the needs of our global customers. By continuing to provide industry solutions based on innovative infrastructure, we will help our customers leverage cloud and big data technologies to realize agile business and rapid innovation to create a competitive edge in the digital economy.” 

Paul Abi-Chahine, regional director, EEMEA at SUSE, said: “Companies in the Middle East are on fast track for digital transformation – and therefore they need a reliable foundation for their mission critical workloads. To provide that foundation, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and the KunLun mission-critical server are both designed to enable companies to achieve zero-downtime environments for their core-business applications, running SAP and SAP HANA.”

There are three specifications of KunLun: KunLun 9008, 9016, and 9032. KunLun 9032 server supports up to 32 CPUs, 576 cores, 1152 threads, and 768 DDR4 DIMMs. KunLun servers apply to conventional databases, in-memory computing, High-performance Computing (HPC) fat nodes, and large virtualization platforms. All KunLun servers are fully certified and compatible with Microsoft Windows and SQL, Red Hat products, IBM DB2 database, Oracle database and Huawei FusionSphere products.