Memory maker Kingston Technology
has claimed that memory in industry standard servers is causing virtualization
projects to become unnecessarily expensive and that fears over warranties are
stopping users upgrading.

"Not having enough memory restricts the number of virtual machines, and
also restricts the overall performance. Not having enough memory is either down
to improper planning, or in most cases, the inability to purchase enough memory
due to the higher cost of OEM memory," it said.

In the US the Magnuson Moss Act restricts vendors from scaring customers into
purchasing expensive OEM memory, the company said. "However, in the UK
such constraints do not yet exist, and therefore there is a need to educate
customers that they can use (third party) memory without voiding their warranty."

Rhys Austin, who runs the virtualization practice for industry standard servers
at HP agreed that too little
memory will affect virtualization performance but strongly rejected Kingston's
assertion that users were worried about price or warranties.

Austin said that while there may be "instances in time" where HP
memory is over 20 percent more expensive than other memory products, HP's server
market share indicated that users did not feel overcharged for their memory
products.

"Adding third party warranty in no way violates the warranty on that server.
Naturally HP can't warranty third party memory and we work hard to ensure that
the configuration of the memory we supply is correct. We have never underspecified
system memory to sell a server," said Austin.

» posted by abennett

Computerworld UK

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