IBM has obediently announced a new Linux-only Power server just a couple of days after El Reg outed the kit.

IBM on Monday revealed that the OpenPower 710 will go on sale on Feb. 18 equipped with 1.65GHz Power5 chips. The two-processor box fits in below the four-processor OpenPower 720 released in September of last year. Both of the servers include some of the high-end features typically found on IBM's AIX kit but come in at a lower price than typical Unix gear.

Last week, The Register discovered the OpenPower 710 on sale at an IBM UK site.

The OpenPower 710 will be offered as both a one-way and two-way server that can fit into standard racks. The box supports both SuSE and Red Hat.

Big Blue bills its OpenPower line as a serious threat to Unix gear from the likes of HP and Sun Microsystems. But at a starting price of $3,449 the OpenPower 710 will also rival systems running on Intel and AMD processors.

That said, most customers prefer to run Linux on what they see as industry standard servers. This makes a move to IBM's Power architecture a bit of a leap. ®

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