16 TB Storage in a System No Bigger Than a Shoebox
Posted on April 30, 2010 by Kristina
Filed Under Applications, General | 8 Comments
Black Dwarf
Logic Supply recently helped support a project by Will Urbina, a custom computer designer and modder. He created a computer system that contains a storage “mass completely unprecedented for its size”; it is compact, well designed, and really creative. I kind of want one for my office. It looks like a mini jukebox that plays HDDs instead of records. The final project is titled “Black Dwarf,” and you can read about it here.
The donated hardware was a Quanmax KEEX-2030 3.5″ Mainboard and a 120-watt miniature power supply.
You can also view a video of the project here.
Not Your Typical Mini-ITX Rackmount
Posted on April 15, 2010 by Kristina
Filed Under New Products, Product-Related | 5 Comments
We’re a technology company. So, obviously, we attract a fair amount of geeky engineers to our team who get extremely giddy when the opportunity arises for new product development. It’s actually an interesting process to observe: an Ikea-clad conference room populated by a bunch of technology optimists hashing out grand plans for world domination. You know the kind. “And what if we added this and made it work like this, and if we flipped that around and put another one of those in there, then, well… Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Alright, we’re not building Rome here (I know, I know!), but I can’t hide the excitement from seeing one of our product designs realized.
The SL1UR-B is a 1U Mini-ITX rackmount case that offers a lot of flexibility for storage, expansion, mounting, cooling, and power supply options. The goal was to create a basic, bare-bone configuration and let customers add on the accessories as needed and design a rackmount system that truly fit their requirements and their budgets.
Flexible, Solid State Computer for $299
Posted on April 8, 2010 by Kristina
Filed Under New Products, Product-Related | 8 Comments
SolidLogic JT01 Fanless System
As technology grows more standardized and commonplace, the pricey hardware relics of the past are no longer the only option for securing quality systems and components. Four years ago, I can remember selling digital cameras and customers asking for a decent choice for sub $100. That’s when I reached behind the counter and handed them a box that held a plastic digital camera inside wrapped up like a Barbie Doll. If you wanted the next step up, you moved into the 4 mega-pixel category with sub-par lenses and digital zoom. Not until you reached the $400~$500 range did you begin to see cameras that you would actually want to take pictures with. Nothing really existed in between. I would coach customers into buying something that met their minimal requirements and then tell them to wait for another year because what they held in their hands would be obsolete in twelve months and they would be able to get a camera twice as good for cheaper. Needless to say, I didn’t last very long as a salesperson.
This kind of low-end-to-quality hardware option delta also was evident when I arrived at Logic Supply three years ago. The ruggedized, high-end solid state (no moving parts) computer systems cost a customer over $1500 for a basic configuration around an embedded VIA processing platform. Forget about dual core. The jump from a non-fanless system to a fanless one was pretty steep. Customers were certainly willing to take the plunge two years ago because nothing else really existed and people had money to spend. If you needed it, you needed it. That’s certainly not the case anymore.
With the introduction of the Intel Atom processor and subsequently Intel’s first, entry-level Mini-ITX offering, the “Little Falls,” mainboard and system prices began to drastically shoot downward. Flash memory prices also continued to ebb and flow with the market, but recently we’ve seen a significant drop in the overall cost of these components, too. The point I’m making here is that customers can finally obtain a quality, completely solid state system with a basic configuration (512 RAM, 1 GB solid state storage) for a reasonable price. The disparity between high-end and cheap has narrowed. (And, yes, I’m going to promote one of our new products to back up my previous statement.) Our new JT01 Fanless Mini-ITX System bridges the gap; it is slim, solid, completely fanless, and well priced at a starting configuration price of $299.
Intel’s Next-Generation Atom Mini-ITX Mainboards Have Arrived
Posted on January 14, 2010 by Kristina
Filed Under General, New Products | 8 Comments
Dual Core D510MO "Mount Olive"
At first glimpse, the Intel D410PT, codenamed “Packton,” is simply unimpressive, plain (yawn). The Intel D510MO, codenamed “Mount Olive,” is like the older sibling who, at the very least, plays on the varsity basketball team, but warms the bench most of the time—no one even knows the kid’s last name. We would pass over these two with glazed eyes, looking for something a little more exciting, like the tall brunette playing center. But, we should know better. Haven’t we heard the old saying, “It’s what’s on the inside that counts”? Well, very true with these motherboards. If we didn’t know for months already what Intel was planning with these boards, we wouldn’t be so excited. I have to say though, our excitement isn’t necessarily about these two particular boards. Just like any other Intel Mini-ITX mainboard, the features are minimal, the life-cycle is short (12~24 months), and the components are not industrial rated. But does Intel really care about that? No. And they shouldn’t. These boards sell themselves. For many applications, customers need little more than a video connection and some other basic I/O. These boards are inexpensive, meet typical computing requirements, and play host to the most important piece here: Intel’s processors. Read more
Virtualization with Xen
Posted on November 25, 2009 by Matthew Gagne
Filed Under Applications, General, Linux | 5 Comments
First Contact
About 6-7 years ago I recall my first brief foray into virtualization; it was done purely out of curiosity. The host system was my college computer, a 1.8 GHz AMD Athlon CPU running Windows XP with maybe a gig of RAM… I thought, “Surely this beast was up to the task, it could run Quake 3 after all!”
After installing VMWare Workstation and getting familiar with the interface, I had installed another Windows XP system… running on my Windows XP system. For some reason at the time, I felt there was something strange about this. While my hardware struggled along, I waited patiently to install a few applications and convince myself that I was indeed working with another separate system.
At that point, I just didn’t get it. Why cripple good hardware to run another operating system? You could run one operating system with good performance, or many at a fraction of the performance (depending on settings and configuration and such, but you get the point). Sure it was a fun gimmick, you could close an instance of Windows with a button click or try to install sketchy programs and viruses in the virtual machine to see how much it could take before it croaked. Though, running a virtual machine as a server in this fashion (full OS running on full OS) somehow seemed like a bad idea… Read more
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