Server -- Engadget

server posts

Apple gives Mac mini a spec bump, adds dual-HDD Mac mini server

by Joshua Topolsky posted Oct 20th 2009 at 12:01PM

Apple's high-noon extravaganza is touching just about every aspect of the company's consumer lineup today, and considering just how long it's been (okay, so maybe not that long) since the Mac mini saw any love, we're thrilled that it's amongst the crowd seeing updates today. The new $599 Mac mini configuration gets fitted with a 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo CPU (up from 2GHz), 2GB of RAM (up from 1GB) and a 160GB hard drive (up from 120GB). The $799 build features a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB of memory (up from 2GB) and a 320GB hard drive (same as before), and both machines sport the same GeForce 9400M GPU and 8x SuperDrive as they did in March. The most intriguing news on the mini front, however, has nothing to do with the standard rigs.

Apple is today introducing an all new machine in the Mac mini server, a system that's formed in the exact same enclosure as the standard mini but without an optical drive of any kind. Instead, there's room for an additional hard drive, and the $999 model ships with two 500GB HDDs. It also includes Snow Leopard Server (unlimited clients), a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB of RAM, a GeForce 9400M GPU and the same port assortment (meaning no mini-DisplayPort) as found on the other guys. It's hard to say just how well something like this will do, but we're guessing Apple doesn't much mind if it remains a niche product. Catch Apple's official blurb after the break.

Gallery: Apple gives Mac mini a spec bump, adds dual-HDD Mac mini server

Continue reading Apple gives Mac mini a spec bump, adds dual-HDD Mac mini server

SGI announces Octane III personal supercomputer

by Joseph L. Flatley posted Sep 22nd 2009 at 11:41AM

We've seen companies throw in with personal supercomputing platforms in the past, but if anybody makes a splash with the things we hope it's SGI. The new SGI -- that is, the mash-up of the old SGI and Rackable -- has just announced the Octane III, an office-friendly (one-by-two-foot) tower that can sit under a (fairly large) desk while permitting up to 80 high-performance cores with its nearly 1TB of memory. Options include Intel Xeon 5500 series, Dual-core Atom, or Xeon 3400 processors, and an NVIDIA GP-GPU card. If you're a system administrator with money to throw around and a burning desire to add a machine running Microsoft HPC Server 2008, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, or Red Hat Enterprise Linux to your network (and who isn't, really?) hit up the read link to talk to a sales rep. Prices start at $7995.

Show full PR text

SGI Unveils Octane™ III Personal Supercomputer

Octane III Delivers Unparalleled Performance, Energy Efficiency and Ease of Use to HPC Users in Office Environments

Intel Developer Forum 2009, San Francisco

FREMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SGI® (NASDAQ: SGI) today announced the immediate availability of Octane™ III, the company's first personal supercomputer. This new product takes high-performance computing to a new level by combining the immense power and performance capabilities of a high-performance deskside cluster with the portability and usability of a workstation. The Octane III is uniquely suited for workplace environments and supports a vast range of distributed technical computing applications.

Octane III is office-ready with a pedestal, one-by-two-foot form factor, whisper-quiet operations, easy-to-use features, low maintenance requirements and support for standard office power outlets. While a typical workstation has only eight cores and moderate memory capacity, the superior design of the Octane III permits up to 80 high-performance cores and nearly 1TB of memory for unparalleled performance.

"Octane III makes supercomputing personal again," said Mark J. Barrenechea, president and CEO of SGI. "Our customers have been asking for office environment products with large core counts that are easy to use and whisper-quiet. Octane III brings all of this to the HPC professional, and enables a new era of personal innovation in strategic science, research, development and visualization."

Octane III is easily configurable with single- and dual-socket node choices, and offers a wide selection of performance, storage, graphics, GP-GPU and integrated networking options. Yielding the same leading power efficiencies inherent in all SGI Eco-Logical™ compute designs, Octane III supports the latest Intel® processors to capitalize on greater levels of performance, flexibility and scalability.

"IDC research has shown a growing demand for high-performance deskside supercomputers, and the new Octane III personal supercomputer is designed to directly address the requirements of both the entry level HPC technical server market and the desktop workstation market with a high-performance cluster designed to help close the gap between the desktop and the data center," said Earl Joseph, HPC Program Vice President at IDC. "SGI workstations and servers have been highly regarded by HPC scientists, engineers and analysts, and the new system with up to 80 high-performance cores and 1TB of memory is certain to capture the attention of many HPC computing professionals."

Octane III is available in a variety of configurations:

* Ten dual-socket, Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series-based nodes
* One dual-socket, Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series-based workstation with advanced NVIDIA graphics and/or GP-GPU card support
* Nineteen single-socket, Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 3400 series-based nodes
* Nineteen single-socket, Dual-Core Intel® Atom™ processor-based nodes

"SGI's Octane III offers a solution for workstation users wanting to reach dramatically higher levels of performance with minimal investment. With the support of up to 19 Intel® Xeon® processors, HPC users looking to enhance their workgroup productivity outside the data center can also utilize the benefits of the Octane III for faster discovery and quicker simulations," said Richard Dracott, General Manager of High Performance Computing at Intel. "With certification from the Intel® Cluster Ready program, Octane III will provide a powerful, easy-to-deploy personal supercomputer."

For a simple, out-of-the-box experience, Octane III ships as a factory-tested, pre-integrated platform with broad HPC application support – powerful enough for the most complex applications in the world. These include fluid dynamics, quantum mechanics, molecular dynamics, seismic processing, data analytics, rendering, visualization and computer-aided design, among many other HPC applications.

Octane III supports Microsoft HPC Server 2008, SUSE® Linux® Enterprise Server and Red Hat® Enterprise Linux operating systems. Linux configurations include SGI ProPack™ and ISLE™ cluster management software.

Octane III will be on display at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) at Moscone Center, San Francisco, Calif., on September 22-24, 2009, in Booth # 718 at the Technology Showcase in the HyperScale Community.

Availability and Pricing:

Octane III is immediately available with Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series or Intel® Atom™ configurations. The base configuration price starts at $7,995. For more information about Octane III, please visit http://www.sgi.com/OctaneIII.

Sarotech's WizPlat boxes 4TB NAS with BitTorrent client, biscuits

by Thomas Ricker posted Sep 17th 2009 at 5:24AM

Let's be honest: the standout feature of the WizPlat NAS-20 is its boxed-lunch design. Otherwise, it's a pretty standard network attached storage device offering Gigabit ethernet, up to 4TB (2TB per 3.5-inch bay) in RAID 0/1 or JBOD configs, 2x USB for more storage, FTP, SAMBA, iTunes, and printer servers, and integrated BitTorrent client for 24/7 PC-less downloads. Unfortunately the design, while portable, pretty much eliminates any hope of constructing a stacked monument to copyright infringement.

[Via Akihabara News]

HP MediaSmart EX490 and EX495 Home Servers beef up Mac support

by Paul Miller posted Sep 15th 2009 at 2:20AM

Listen, son, back in our day we had a tape drive, a copy of Retrospect and a nightly schedule... and we liked it. These days HP thinks it can stuff a Dual Core processor, 2GB of RAM and up to four 2TB drives in our faces. The new EX490 and EX495 can handle up to 7TB of internal storage and up to 17TB pairing up internal drives with external hanger-ons. More interesting, however, are the new software capabilities built on top of Windows Home Server. Mac users now get admin features, media collection and bare metal recovery over Time Machine, and the servers have a built-in video converter for collecting and converting videos for a specific device. Speaking of devices, iPhone and iPod touch users can also stream media off of the servers using a free HP iStream app. The EX490 has a Celeron processor and 1TB of storage for $549, while the EX495 does 1.5TB and the Dual Core for $699. PR is after the break.

Gallery: HP MediaSmart EX490 and EX495 Home Servers press shots

Gallery: HP MediaSmart EX490 and EX495 Home Servers hands-on

Continue reading HP MediaSmart EX490 and EX495 Home Servers beef up Mac support

ASUS TS mini home server makes its blurrycam debut

by Ross Miller posted Sep 12th 2009 at 3:29PM

If these China-borne blurrycam photos are to believed, ASUS is following Acer into the home server market with the TS mini. Along with the images came some alleged specs, conveniently sized up with its rival's easyStore Home Server, showing it to be lighter, taller, and half the width, but also having room for only two 3.5-inch SATA drives versus four in the Acer version. It's all run by a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 with 2GB RAM, an ethernet port, and storage expansion options including six USB 2.0 and two eSATA ports. What's that, you want price and release date? It seems no one can confirm this device has even gone beyond the prototype stages, so don't pencil this into your holiday wish list just yet.

[Via We Got Served]

Iomega introduces StorCenter ix4-200d NAS

by Nilay Patel posted Aug 28th 2009 at 3:28AM

Iomega just expanded its StorCenter NAS line with the new-four bay StorCenter ix4-200d. Just like the smaller ix2, the ix4 can handle pretty much whatever you throw at it: filesharing over a laundry list of protocols, streaming to iTunes, an Xbox 360, handling your Time Machine backups -- it can even take video directly off Axis-brand IP surveillance cameras. On the hardware side, you're looking at dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, three USB ports for printer sharing and additional storage, and a "QuikTransfer" button that'll let yo copy files directly from a flash drive to the NAS without a computer. The downside? You'll have to pay for all that power: the 2TB version costs $700, and the top-of-the-line 8TB model will set you back a whopping $1,900. Yes, you can just get a dedicated server for that kind of money, but then you wouldn't be able to say you were rolling with NAS, now would you?

[Via Yahoo]

Lenovo debuts IdeaCentre D400 home server, 'world's thinnest' Q100 and Q110 nettops

by Darren Murph posted Aug 18th 2009 at 4:03PM

Remember those digital home products we saw Lenovo tease yesterday? Yeah, they're real, and they're now more official than ever. Kicking things off is the company's first-ever home server, the IdeaCentre D400, which sort of resembles a certain Acer product and supports up to 8TB of storage via multiple types / sizes of HDDs; there's also five USB sockets along with an eSATA port for adding even more storage externally. Next up is the IdeaCentre Q100 and NVIDIA Ion-powered Q110 nettops, both of which measure in at just 6- x 6.3- x 0.7-inches and offer plenty of basic power for the size. The WinXP-equipped Q100 hums along on 14 watts when idle (40 watts at full load) and sports a single VGA port, while the Vista-laden Q110 dishes out 1080p content over HDMI; further specs include an Atom 230 CPU, 1GB / 2GB of RAM, 160GB / 250GB hard drives, gigabit Ethernet and WiFi. As for pricing? The D400 should start around $499, the Q100 approximately $249 and the Q110 at $349 when they all ship next month. Feel free to peruse the full press release and specifications after the break.

Continue reading Lenovo debuts IdeaCentre D400 home server, 'world's thinnest' Q100 and Q110 nettops

Lenovo teases IdeaCentre Q100 / Q110 nettops, D400 home server

by Ross Miller posted Aug 17th 2009 at 10:03PM

There's not a lot to go on here, but Lenovo's official Twitter account posted pictures of two products that are purportedly being revealed in more detail later this week. The IdeaCentre Q100 / Q110 nettops are said to be "some of the thinnest nettops in the world," and while the teaser image is certainly a looker, for better and for worse we can already smell the Atom processor from here. Also on the menu is the IdeaCentre D400, the company's first home server. We Got Served did a little digging, and as it turns out, the D400 was released in Asia at the beginning of this month, with four hot swappable bays, four USB ports, and an eSATA port. It'd be nice to know when this week Lenovo was planning to lift the veil of secrecy, but at least we won't be worrying about it come Saturday.

[Via ThinkPad; thanks, Mark]

Read - Q100 / Q110 nettops
Read - D400 home server
Read - More details on the D400

Continue reading Lenovo teases IdeaCentre Q100 / Q110 nettops, D400 home server

Baryonyx to build largest offshore wind farms in the US, power massive data centers

by Darren Murph posted Jul 23rd 2009 at 8:27AM

Uh oh Mr. Pickens -- looks like you've got some competition down in Texas. With the aforesaid energy baron scraping plans to plant 687 massive wind turbines in Texas' panhandle, Baryonyx has stepped in to do the honors via a slightly different project. Just this past week, Baryonyx won a bid to create a pair of sizable offshore wind farms that Jerry Patterson -- Commissioner of the Texas General Land Office -- says "could be the biggest offshore wind farms in the nation." Additionally, another lease was granted for a prospective wind energy development in the panhandle, and now the company is eager to get going on the green energy gigs. The best part of this whole plan involves that actual purpose of the turbines; aside from providing juice for grids, they'll also be used to energize forthcoming Tier 4 server farms, with a minimum of 750 megawatts of power being pumped to two coastal areas all the while. Ma Earth would be proud.

[Via CNET]

Read - Baryonyx announcement [PDF]
Read - Patterson announcement [PDF]

iPhone server rack an exercise in network storage indulgence

by Ross Miller posted Jul 15th 2009 at 6:36PM

Here's one way to get yourself noticed. Japanese developer FreeBit, in looking for a way to show off its Serversman iPhone app, has debuted a prototype ultra-small server rack. Perfect for when you happen to have up to five iPhones / iPod touches lying around and nothing better to do but turn them into overpriced network storage solutions -- then again, if you're rocking five of Apple's touchscreens, there's a good chance money isn't your biggest concern.

[Via DVICE]

AMD six-core Opterons get new 'Highly Efficient' and 'Special Edition' siblings

by Vladislav Savov posted Jul 13th 2009 at 4:16PM

We can beat about the bush or we can just admit that Intel has AMD beat on pretty much all fronts right now. Cognizant of this, AMD sprung the Istanbul server chips months ahead of schedule, and is now seeking to maintain momentum by adding meat to the bone. Three new chips are being added to the server-focused HE (Highly Efficient) Opteron line -- all clocked between 2GHz and 2.1GHz and dissipating 55 watts of heat -- while pure performance considerations are addressed with the SE 2439 and SE 8439, both running at 2.8GHz with 6MB of L3 cache. If we were paranoid, we might think today's leak of Intel's mobile CPU schedule was a coordinated attempt by the market leader to steal some of the limelight from this announcement by Advanced Micro Devices. Those of you who actually need to buy processors in batches of 1,000 or more should hit the read link for a full price breakdown.

[Via Daily Tech]

Samsung debuts first 32GB DDR3 memory module

by Donald Melanson posted Jun 18th 2009 at 3:38PM

Samsung has been making promises about a 32GB DDR3 memory module since it rolled out its first 50nm 4Gb DDR3 memory chip way back in January, but it looks like it's now finally delivered. While it won't be headed for regular desktops or laptops just yet, the company does have a new 1.35 volt 32GB module for servers which, in addition to packing that record-breaking capacity, also boasts a 20% better throughput compared to previous 1.5 volt modules and, of course, a lower power consumption to boot. As some math not performed by us will reveal, the module itself is made up of 72 of those 4Gb memory chips, which are lined up in rows of nine quad-die packaged 16Gb DDR3s mounted on each side of the circuit board. No word on pricing just yet, nor is there any word about Samsung's promised desktop and laptop memory, which are apparently still in the works -- in the form of 8GB DIMMs, at least.

Intel's new Nehalem-EX CPUs rock servers with eight cores, 16 threads, infinite sex appeal

by Tim Stevens posted May 27th 2009 at 8:06AM

What's that, you have an array of six-core CPUs in your rack? That is so last year. You're going to feel pretty foolish when all the cool admins start popping eight-core chips up in their closets this fall. That's the number on offer in Intel's latest, the Nehalem-EX. It's an evolution of the architecture that some of you may be spinning in your Core i7 machines, but boosted to support up to 16 threads and 24MB of cache. 2.3 billion transistors make the magic happen here, and Intel is pledging a nine-times improvement in memory bandwidth over the Xeon 7400. Chips are set to start hitting sockets sometime later this year, and while nobody's talking prices, staying hip in the enterprise server CPU crowd doesn't come cheap.

Acer launches easyStore Home Server: 1TB expandable storage for $400

by Ross Miller posted May 21st 2009 at 1:19AM

Acer's entering the home server market, and its first entry's gonna be the easyStore AH340-UA230N with built-in Windows Home Server. It's juiced up with Intel Atom 230 processor and 2GB DDR2 RAM, and in addition to 1TB of storage, you've got three 3.5-inch hot swappable bays for a possible total of 7TB of storage. Throw in some DLNA 1.5 certification and a $400 price tag, and you've got yourself pretty decent competitor to HP's MediaSmart lineup. According to the presser, it should be available sometime around now-ish. Mosey on after the break for a look at the its innards.

Continue reading Acer launches easyStore Home Server: 1TB expandable storage for $400

HP MediaSmart LX195 boasts 640GB HDD, 1.6GHz Atom, $400 MSRP

by Ross Miller posted Apr 29th 2009 at 8:39PM

Yearning for more info on the HP MediaSmart LX195? Here's some new concrete details for you to go along with the leaked images from earlier this month. As previously suggested, it's got a a single 640GB internal SATA drive with 7200RPM, with the only option for expansion being via the four USB 2.0 ports in the back. We're also looking at a 1.6GHz Atom 230 processor, 1GB RAM, Windows Home Server software and support for Apple's Time Machine. Mum's the word on price, but if you're looking to start saving early, suggested retail price is just under four Benjamins.