Low Powered Mini-Server for the Masses

ServerSam writes "Sudhian has a review up on EmergeCore's "IT in a Box" IT100. Designed for small business use, it comes equipped with a Transmeta Crusoe 533MHz, 128MB RAM, 20GB IBM TravelStar, 802.11b Access Point, and boots from a 32MB Flash card. The IT100 is powered by a 60 watt external PSU and is smaller than a PS2."

Comments

hmm

[FinestLittleSpace]

... i dont trust reviewers who have those god awful 'mini' 'cube' PCs as their workstation!

Still, a nice light bit of hardware, i must say. Hats off, even if it's weak.

Re:hmm

[Cthefuture]

Erm... What?!

My friend, silence is the future of computing. I really hate, I mean I - HATE - those god awful gianormous skyscraper towers that blast out 90dB of concentration breaking whirring and grinding sounds. Not to mention the heat and wasted space. Who needs 8 PCI slots, 12 drive bays, and a 600W power supply?! That's legacy garbage from the ;lt%90's man.

Smaller, faster, QUIETER. That is the future.

You sound like one of those "old timers" that likes inefficient crap just because that's all you know.

You would probably take a CRT over an LCD any day, right? (*)

* By the way, CRT's do have there uses in high speed games (Quake) but other than that they just burn your retinas.

Re:hmm

[tigga]

My friend, silence is the future of computing. I really hate, I mean I - HATE - those god awful gianormous skyscraper towers that blast out 90dB of concentration breaking whirring and grinding sounds. Not to mention the heat and wasted space. Who needs 8 PCI slots, 12 drive bays, and a 600W power supply?! That's legacy garbage from the ;lt%90's man.

Do not confuse issues. Silence and space are perpendicular. Or may be not. It's much easier to silence tower than those tiny boxes. If you have powerfull processor you should have choice in cooling arrangements and in case of tiny box you do not have one.

You sound like one of those "old timers" that likes inefficient crap just because that's all you know.

This is unfair and non-mature.

Re:I have a mini server for you god dammit.

[Anonymous Coward]

That sound you hear is the sound of you having failed it.

Suckah.

Other than size...

[BJZQ8]

Other than size, I think one of those $199 Walmart Microtel machines would be a better deal...they now have 1300MHz Durons in them. They are a bit skimpy on memory (come with 128MB), but you can buy 512MB of the SDR stuff they use for $50 these days. I have a bunch of them, and they've been flawless!

Er...

[FrostedWheat]

Yes, you can use Linux and other "free" operating systems, but the concept of Linux, and it's "unaccountability" scares most small business owners

Yes ... because as we all know Microsoft or Apple are completly "accountable" for any errors or damage there OS causes...

Re:Er...

[kinnell]

Yes ... because as we all know Microsoft or Apple are completly "accountable" for any errors or damage there OS causes...

What matters is that most people who make business decisions to use commercial software believe that the vendor is liable, and continue to believe it despite any evidence to the contrary, such as "we do not guarantee that this software will do what it is designed to do".

Re:Er...

[tabdelgawad]

The two parent posts reflect conventional wisdom here in slashdot. Unfortunately, they miss the point, which is that even if there is no strict 'legal' liability (and there are reasons to think even this may not be true), there's always some 'effective' liability imposed by business reality.

For example, suppose TurboTax makes a certain error in filing that affects a certain percentage of its customers, who are then punished with fees/audits by the IRS. If the case is publicized and the error is strictly TurboTax's, could TurboTax really afford to say that they're not liable because of their EULA? What would that do to their sales the following year? And what would consumer recourse be if they used a non-commercial tax package instead of TurboTax? Who would they hit up for their fees and damages?

Additionally, there's no guarantee that all EULAs would stand a legal test in a liability case. I believe that was what UCITA was all about, strengthening EULAs to limit software liability. If EULAs were always legally biniding, UCITA would probably be unnecessary.

I don't claim that commercial software vendors will always be liable, but there are formal and informal ways of accountability available with commercial vendors. It's not fair to claim that businesses are being completely irrational in continuing to believe this.

Cobalt RaQ and Cobalt Qube?

[ThogScully]

Anyone recognize the niche as that of Cobalt, before Sun took them over? Did those do well enough that this can be popular?

Unfortunately, as an operator of a Cobalt RaQ for many years, I found it to be very limiting once we did figure out how to really use it and how little the custom interfaces allowed, but it was great for people who just wouldn't learn that stuff.

I hope no one thinks these are patch-proof though,. Our Cobalt needed patches and even with them had trouble avoiding a few compromises since patches were so delayed. Now it runs Debian and I couldn't be happier with the little box.
-N

Re:Cobalt RaQ and Cobalt Qube?

[danamania]

It's not a bad small out of the way server for the old learning experience. The whole idea of starting admins-in-training on the most minimal hardware instead of having them throw 3GHz PIVs at serving a home site that gets 5 visitors a day just begs for inefficiency down the line.

I started my site on a 33MHz Quadra. It'd still be using that if I didn't rely on quite a bit of PHP in places. There was no reason to jump up too far, so a PPC601 was the next machine up.

What the whole experience has taught me is how to keep things running efficiently by knowing the system well, and remembering never to do stupid things, like post the URL on slashdot. :)

"The IT100 did it all at a cost of $1,395"

[no_such_user]

$1395?! Why not just buy a laptop? Or two? It would be (much!) faster, similarly power efficient with an external power supply, could likely boot from CF, could act as an AP, would even have an integrated diplay for debugging... and MUCH more. C'mon folks -- I was hoping something like this would go for $400, not $1400!

Re:"The IT100 did it all at a cost of $1,395"

[itsnotthenetwork]

I think this is supposed to be for people who are too ignorant or too lazy to set up their own servers. If you want to be lazy it is going to cost you .

Re:"The IT100 did it all at a cost of $1,395"

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

Yep, but there is an advantage:
Think this is going for a server, the real meaning of server is 24*7; so heat is your enemy here ... there is no notebook out there that can manage to have 7 months of uptime with a high cpu usage without burning out or hanging all the time ... Crusoe is a beatifull cold processor. But i agree with you ... this kind of device is for marketroids that wants some big company behind their hard/soft, because they think that is a kind of warranty of profit (like all those assholes using redhat) ... If you have the knowledge *and* the balls to tell the manager that you are going to put home-made hardware in their raqs; it will work as well as any of this closed boxes.

Re:"The IT100 did it all at a cost of $1,395"

[Cthefuture]

Yeah but you could certainly build a VIA mini-itx system for a hell of a lot less and with a faster processor.

Anyone else notice that Newegg seems to have stopped carrying mini-itx boards? Why is that?

Re:"The IT100 did it all at a cost of $1,395"

[cgreuter]

$1395?! Why not just buy a laptop?

Consider the cost of the time spent configuring the laptop or PC to work as an office server and add that to the cost. Keep in mind that most people aren't Unix experts and even the ones that are will likely have to spend several hours reading HOWTOs and man pages before they can get everything working. The advantage of one of these devices is that you plug it in, turn it on and it just works. That means, you can go back to doing profitable work sooner.

I have no doubt that if you really need an office server, $1395 is not to high a price to pay if you don't have to sink any time into it.

That being said though, it looks to me like NetWinder will do the same job at less than half the price.

No Fault Tolerance? No Server

[Slider451]

Without at least RAID 1 (mirrored drives) I never consider a hardware device a server. A PC running backend applications with no redundancy is a bad idea in a busy business.

Re:No Fault Tolerance? No Server

[wwest4]

for a small business, fault tolerance is having a spare appliance complete w/ flash image.

you wouldn't be smart to use an appliance like this for file serving applications, but for DC/AD/NIS/DNS/BOOTP/DHCP, static web content, it would be a good choice for a small business if you skip the HDD and use a bigger CF card. no moving parts, longer useful lifetime and poor-man's N+1. perfect for a no-nonsense small bus.

Re:No Fault Tolerance? No Server

[mrtroy]

For small business, I dont see a reason why you would not use raid-1.
#1. You can set it up yourself, with minimal costs, and skills.
#2. If a drive fails, you have no problems. No time/cost to you for backups.
#3. You could build a server for much cheaper than these premade "small cheap" ones.
#4. Dont go for the trendy small things so you save costs, or if you do, build your own and build your own box for some creative input.

I realize that not everyone has amazing computer skills, but to setup a server like that, it would require not much skill or time, and its a one time setup. With raid-1, you dont even have to make backups. So make an informed choice, instead of saying that this crappy expensive server is prefect.

Re:No Fault Tolerance? No Server

[Slider451]

Good points. However:

With raid-1, you dont even have to make backups.

That's a common misconception with RAID. Redundant disks only protect you from hardware failure. You still need to make backups to recover from human failure. If Bob in accounting deletes your Quickbooks files, they're gone. I just had to restore a giant spreadsheet from tape a couple days ago, onto a RAID 5 system.

RAID won't save you from Bob.

Re:No Fault Tolerance? No Server

[JediTrainer]

RAID 1 schemes (1, 0+1, 10) are also capable of running without a performance hit when one drive fails, unlike RAID 3/4/5 systems, some implementations of which cannot run at all until rebuilt.

Not to nitpick myself, but believe it or not I've run across a Compaq Server (less than 2 years old) that couldn't boot properly while the 0+1 array was being rebuilt. Yes, the data was preserved, but having to wait a few hours to get the machine back up was agonizing.

Fortunately we had a backup server (with just the critical parts of the app), so we switched to that in the meantime, then waited patiently to get everything else up.

We're now working on eliminating the Compaqs from our critical infrastructure. They are way too failure prone, and a failure of a one-inch fan against the CPU (out of 3) meant the box would shut down and refuse to start until it's replaced. And this happened multiple times to several of our servers.

Why have 3 fans at all if you can't tolerate the failure of one of them?

Not just size

[Gleef]

The noise level and power usage are also key for this machine. Of course, there are other fanless machines, many of them much cheaper than this one. (Note: Not all of the machines at that site are fanless, but many are, check out the Tranquil PC and the Hush). (Also Note: Fanless doesn't equal silent, you still get drive noise and monitor whine, unless you replace those with solid state components)

Just think what a geek can do with $1100 these day

[LazloToth]

Sure, I know that not everyone can build his own box and load it with Linux. But for this money, I'm thinking you could do pretty well with a Duron, a couple of ATA 133 drives, and a cheap 1U box. If you can run a web interface such as the one described here, you probably could do alright with Webmin, too. And think how much more useful and trustworth a thing you'd have.

Ah, well - - aren't the do-it-yourselfers among us lucky?

Re:Ripping off

[wwest4]

you don't need a 2+ GHz P4 to run common net svcs. you need a cold-running reliable box, preferably with no fans or drive spindles to wear out.

for small businesses, appliances make a lot of sense. they just want stuff to work and be simple to understand from a high level - they don't want a custom hack job (as fun as that may be).

these boxes (along with the slew of thin client appliances out there) often run open-source software, and not all are as expensive as this baby. i, for one, welcome our black box toaster overlords - at least at the mom&pop level.

Small Servers?

[mr_lithic]

When did size become a massive concern for people buying servers?

I thought cooling, data transfer rates and reliability (redundant PSU's etc) were the main considerations. Processor speed and storage capacity are definitely up there as well.

But Size?

I don't understand

Re:Small Servers?

[blkmajik]

You obviously don't pay for floor space at a co-location data center.

CF for boot?

[jargoone]

Looks very cool, but I don't understand the need for CF card for booting. I can understand if you used a read-only medium to boot from, but this has a hard disk. Is there something in the architecture that creates this need?

Re:128MB?

[bigdavex]

A system with only 128MB or RAM is NOT a server in today's world. Ten years ago maybe but not today.

Now there's some exageration. RAM was about $50/MB in 1993, making 128MB $6,400.

at a cost of $1,395.

[frovingslosh]

at a cost of $1,395.

So I can get a tiny underpowered computer for $1395. Big deal. I can get a better computer for a lot less (even if I shell out a little extra for one of those small cube cases and M.B.) And at that price this toy is underpowered in every way, including hard drive space and memory. And a real computer will be less expensive in the long run, even after it's expected life this toy's power savings doesn't come close to justifying the price. Who can it be aimed at? The individual isn't gong to pay this and needs more anyway (or thinks he needs, if he thinks he needs a server at all), and can likely spare the space a single small format PC would take up as well as this. No large cluster of these is likely to be built (certainly not at this price), people who need lots of servers because of space will use Blade systems (and Google will continue to prove these are other low cost but amazingly functional approaches).

Re:Cowards!

[frenetic3]

if you think about the target market for these devices, they're for small businesses that probably don't have a very experienced IT staff (or none at all.) everyone knows how to use a browser though and an ssl-encrypted https session is a secure way to manage. and most non-computer types freak out at CLIs and conversely love shiny graphics and buttons. gotta understand people that would buy this thing just want to see it at staples or compusa, grab it, unwrap it, and have it just _work_.

-fren

speed not required

[sir_cello]

Firstly, disregard all of the useless comments about "it's not fast enough", these come from techie speed freaks who ignore the economics in favour of the sports-car. Most businesses don't want nor need sports-cars.

I have a mini-itx at 500mhz running BSD: it handles 512K dsl + bluetooth + 802.11b+ + samba + nat + firewall + print server + http + everything else quite well - most of the time it idles at 10% CPU. Sure I could use an overblown 576ghz-latest-pentium, but it's just simply not necessary. Power consumption is also low. It's a perfect home server. Kernel build times are pretty good as well. It also hosts development environments for 4 web sites.

I could have have purchased a fast machine, but what's the point ? I have a 2ghz desktop for power-use. In fact, I now wish that I'd gone for a smaller form factor. Even the mini-itx is too big: looks like a DVD player. PC/104 or smaller form factor would be perfect.

Also, ignore the comments about "price": sure you could get a cheaper and faster commodity pc: but then you have to pay for the techie to install and configure the OS and enable everything else. What this appliance is offering is an out-of-the box solution, and you definitely pay for the added value. They're not in business to give things away :-). Most of the people hanging out in slashdot are competent (like me) to build platforms from scratch: but a vast majority of businesses don't have nor can afford nor even need to pay for that kind of approach.

What is this crap?

[shyster]

Okay, so for $1400, I'm getting about $300 or less of parts, a single point of failure for my entire network, and shoddy software.

Okay, so it's pretty and unassuming...looks just like a typical SOHO router. Big whoop. With the mass of Ethernet cables and power cords behind it, it's looks won't garner any awards I'd reckon.

The Low setting only blocks file sharing and proxy from the outside, but is the only Basic Mode setting with which you are able to run the VPN service.

That makes a whole lot of sense...I suppose that folks who want a VPN don't deserve a firewall too?

You can run multiple domains on the IT100, allowing for easy office setups where the hard drive space is shared between multiple companies.

Yeah...I've heard a lot of clamoring for that feature in the SOHO market. Glad they decided that was worthy of the cut....

...you are not allowed to set folder-level permissions for users on the IT100 server. However, every user has a folder that will be private to them on the network, and there is a separate public folder for all users.

A whole public folder, huh? And no folder or file level permissions? I suppose that granular Read/Write/Modify/etc. permissions are out of the question too then? Now I see why you may want multiple domains....

We were initially thrown off on how to connect to the IT100 for file sharing, as it was not accepting our logins. We quickly discovered that when logging in, we needed to include the full domain username, meaning the username "colin" became "colin@mydomain.com".

Does this mean it won't actually validate logins on say...login? Or that the reviewer couldn't figure it out? So much for replacing a domain controller, I guess....

Your username is limited to 19 characters, so if you have a long domain name, you may be in for a shortened username.

Okay, Bob, you're username is bob@sub.domain.local^H. Guess I'll have to fire Richard.

You could potentially run into problems where you have an office with ten employees, but only two people in that office should be able to read the sensitive files you want to share; you cannot set individual permissions for the folders. However, you can use file sharing from your local Windows/Linux computer and allow those users to properly access the files on your machine, so there is a work around.

Yep, it's a good thing I spent $1400 on a server so that I can resort to peer-to-peer networking. Won't this make backing up and finding files fun again?

VPN allows me to connect to my machine on my network without opening up my computers to the rest of the world by assigning them a public IP address.

Yeah, I guess since the firewall in this thing sucks ass, you would be opening your desktops to the rest of the world....

The web server was another cool feature added to the IT100 and would be great for sharing pictures with family and friends, or documents and other work information with business partners....this Apache server supports dynamic content such as PHP and CGI.

I know I always recommend running your dynamic content webserver on your domain controller and fileserver. Especially when your firewall (which is on the same box) sucks.

When it crashed, we did not have to do any maintenance, as it rebooted itself after 2 minutes. Normal file sharing went off without a hitch; it was only under the heavy traffic from encoding high quality MP3s that we were able to get the IT100 to crack. Again, you can tell by the system specs that the IT100 is not designed to be a heavy-duty server, and if it were, you would be paying five-times as much.