NEC has revealed plans to put Red Hat Enterprise Linux on its Express5800/320Ma fault-tolerant enterprise servers.

The Express5800/320Ma supports fault tolerance enhancements made available to the Linux community through Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (Update 4) which delivers full 64-bit capability.

In conjunction with the Red Hat Enterprise Edition 4 support, NEC is also introducing Red Hat Linux Subscription and Support Programmes.

NEC is providing a one-year Red Hat Network Subscription starting at $1,299 along with technical support during business hours.

The Express5800/320Ma is powered by Intel's Xeon 5000 Series processors. Red Hat Enterprise Linux support is available on the Express5800/320Ma 3.2GHz and 2.8GHz dual-core systems.

Up to 8GB of logical memory is supported on the 3.2GHz system and 16GB for dual-core platforms.

The box supports up to 1.2TB of internal storage with connectivity to third-party storage as well as NEC's San-based storage subsystem.

It also includes NEC's Express Cluster Software for Red Hat Linux, providing application monitoring and restart as well as a platform to expand into disaster recovery.

Jean Bozman, research vice president at IDC's Enterprise Servers Group, said: "A fault-tolerant Linux server solution, such as that being offered by NEC, will address customer requirements for Linux computing for mission-critical enterprise applications leveraging Linux and open source software.

"It also provides a highly available building block for Linux server solutions supporting next-generation telecoms applications."