Changes in the product used for virtualizing an HP 3000 include more than performance increases. The emulator starts at a base price of $9,000 to match performance of an A-Class system enabled for eight users. Officials in the Geneva headquarters of Stromasys say the top-end pricing, the N40X0 to create an N-Class caliber 3000 out of Intel server hardware, is $99,000.

The Stromasys HP 3000 product manager Doug Smith has noted several new features of Charon HPA.

In Version 1.6 there are some performance increases. Once again, overall performance will be based on the Intel server it is to be run on. The more power the better. What's new:

• New parameter for virtual Ethernet adapter for physical card configuration
• An NCU (Network Configuration Utility) 
• License support for primary/secondary (backup) licenses
• Extending the limit for number of controllers from 6 to 8 for N40X0 series

The market is hungry for the forthcoming performance. At Veritiv Corporation, Randy Stanfield will need the fastest version of Charon that Stromasys can provide. "We tested about a year and half ago," he said. "We’re running five HP N-Class 4-way systems, each with 750 MHz processors and fully loaded RAM."