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Rack Mount BTX Case
CoolTyler5 writes "The TechZone has posted some information on the world's first ever rackmount MicroBTX chassis. The new patent pending chassis, made by General Technics, allows for more powerful processors and storage capability with a smaller, quieter and cooler MicroBTX form factor. The manufacturer also claims it's nearly silent and at 16 inches deep, will fit into most short depth rack cabinets." Of course, the issue that we have at our data center is not really the physical space. Sure, we'd love more space but the power draw per square meter is at the county-maximum. It's great that we can cram more machines into a smaller foot print, but powering all of them is the issue.
This may not be relevant to those of you who work in large data centres, but for those of us in smaller shops with a few servers in a small rack, being able to fit a more powerful server into less space is useful.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Gives you more space to play cricket. Or just to stuff around.
coral caching before the rush
:)
i d=471
it doesn't have it yet, but it will by the time someone tries to do the same
and there it goes, by the time my preview is done:
http://www.thetechzone.com.nyud.net:8090/?m=show&
OK, this is a little off topic. I'm supposed to trust information from a web site called "The Tech Zone" that allows those fake ad dialog boxes saying, "Your computer may be infected with harmful spyware programs..."? Shady.
Bradley Holt
So let me get this straight. They've taken an industry standard form factor motherboard, and put it in an industry standard form factor rackmount case... and that's worthy of a patent?
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
that's actually hemos writing that, I believe
Fill half your data center, use the rest to house illegal immigrants or store cia!is pills for $$profit$$.
Beep beep.
"...but we try not to indulge in naval gazing."
This case is being made out to be a leap in technology. Yippie skippy, it's a BTX case. The same thing could be achieved in the ATX formfactor. Could someone enlighten me why this is such a special case? Quiet low power rackmounts have been done before.
1. Firstly, how does a blatant advertisement like this get posted in the first place?
2. It's only 16" deep, but it's THREE RU tall. Where's this "space savings" they're talking about? 1/2RU, 1RU, and blade servers are where it's at for saving space.
Happy Boxing Day!
The most cost effective way to achieve density [IMHO]is with 2ux2.com chassis.
Let's see. You're all excited about it's 16" depth, because it will save space.
Realistically, nobody cares too much about depth in a rack, because very few racks are installed to accommodate only 24" of server. On a rack system, it's all about height.
This thing looks like it's a whopping 4U tall! Sure, maybe it's only 3U tall, but that's still missing the point. If you want to save space, you buy a 1U tall server, that way you can install 3 (or 4) of them in the same space. Since you will hardly be able to dictate the depth of all components, it won't matter much if some of your servers are 16" or more.
If you're designing a server room for a small business, you'd be a fool to only allow 16" of rack depth, as you'll never know when someone needs to install the latest full depth server from . Failure to account for such a need will cost you much more when you need to redesign the rack setup to install a new server. I've even seen some non-server components (KVM switches, keyboard / monitor slide-outs, switches, routers, etc) that require more depth for stability (mig case for small internals). People don't throw that stuff away, and you can't guranantee the best components to be in the exact size (or color) you want.
If you're designing a server room for a large business, this might be useful, but only if you can assure yourself that you'll have so many of these 16" servers that they will completely fill up multiple racks. But if you need that many servers, you'll go with 1U servers because then you'll only need 1/4 the number of racks.
So either way, you lose.
instead of Intel P4/Xeon blast furnaces. Then you won't need to switch chassis designs, you'll spend a helluva lot less on electricity, and you should be able to use all your rack space without the county fire marshall ticketing you. Really, this shouldn't be news by now.
Heck, even the standard Opteron dualcores are probably good enough depending on just how bad your power-density problems are. The 55W max HE's are just particularly impressive.
This is an obvious ad! Also, that goes for all of the linked site! They have these fake hyperlinks in the text that are just ads. This is total crap and should not be here.
maybe I am a novice, but wouldnt a 1U or even a blade save a lot more space?
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
If they put it in upright, with the bottom to the front, they can save even more depth. OK, it will be only possible to put in two of each in a rack.
Patent pending.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
If power is your problem, Sun is your solution. Check out the new Ultrasparc T1 powered servers, huge performance at tiny tiny power draw.
And it's only 19" deep. so that's really a lot of processing power in a small footprint.
WHo needs a rackmount microBTX system to save space and energy?
...have a look at the new Sun Opteron servers.
Yeah -- not that useful for a data center because space is no longer the big issue for a lot of people.
But for musicians, having a quiet machine that sits in a rack that isn't too deep means I can put a system in the same rack as the rest of my gear. Can you say portable pro-tools? and for my home setup, I've got 3 or 4 systems. For years I've wanted to get them all rack-mount so that they can be in a neat stack rather than sitting on the floor under desks... but then i stop when I realize how loud rackmount systems are.
So it's useful for some poeople I think.
this doesn't really change the fact that BTX blows and that the only people who even need BTX are the ones running Xeon furnaces even though Opterons that cost the same perform up to twice as fast and produce less heat and use less electricity.
and for the number of ads that are at "thetechzone" i would think they would be able to afford better hosting so there wouldn't be any slashdot effect.
In this case, the system is designed to run a P4. I agree that this is a stupid decision, an Opteron or Athlon64 would make more sense. But tell that to the designers of the system, not to CoolTyler5.
C - the footgun of programming languages
If your county doesn't serve businesses well, then move to another county that does. I'm sure the new county will be happy to have the employment move in.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I don't see what the editors sexual orientation has to do with their stupidity.
If I only had mod points I would mod the parent up.
Isn't there some Computer Science adage about solving problems by adding another layer of abstraction?
--
Do we need more fiber to keep our network regular?
jeez what an amateur operation. With 'proper' HP/Dell servers costing as little as they do why on earth would you go with this hack job?
The "article" is lame, partly because it's a rehashed press release, but mostly because there's no link to the actual product. (Or so buried that I couldn't find it in the midst of all the ads and sponsored links.)
Anyway, the actual product is here: http://gtweb.net/j3150.html
BTX is designet not to melt under Intel house heaters
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
If power and heat are issues in your data center you need to check out some of the new systems Sun Microsystems is putting out. They drasticly reduce power needed as well as heat generated which translates into significant savings for A/C costs.
Check them out. There are a number of good options, and you can use Solaris, Linux, or even windos depending on the system you choose.
>WHo needs a rackmount microBTX system to save space and energy?
"Xeon + Windows server is the answer" management crowd.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
The Capricorn Tech redboxes that the Internet Archive uses are tiny as well, and they will fit any mATX motherboard, in addition to the VIA that's in there now.
It's tiny, cool, and badass. You can fit 4 SATA drives and a dual-core Athlon64 chip in there...
The author is right, power is the issue.
The BTX form factor is a desktop form factor designed to provide low profile, efficient cooling, and be "scaleable" in motherboard size. The form factor is quieter, cooler, and will allow smaller cases.
X _Specification%20v1.0b.pdf
/ SYS-5025M-4.cfm
See: http://www.formfactors.org/developer%5Cspecs%5CBT
That said, case manufacturers have adjusted to the needs of the server market with the ATX standard. They have introduced 1U and 2U systems with effective cooling solutions to deliver low profile, efficient cooling, and be "scaleable" in motherboard size already. With BTX being primarily aimed at desktop, so the motherboards may lack server class features (SCSI, RAID, etc).
A quick search on Google rendered a solution from Supermicro that has more drive bays, uses P4 if thats your thing, and does this all in 2U form factor using an ATX motherboard.
See: http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/2U/5025
I'd say it's time to move.
A standard musician's equipment rack in a recording studio is 16" deep, so a 16" (rather than 19") deep rack is extremely useful for a musician.
this doesn't really change the fact that BTX blows and that the only people who even need BTX are the ones running Xeon furnaces even though Opterons that cost the same perform up to twice as fast and produce less heat and use less electricity.
and for the number of ads that are at "thetechzone" i would think they would be able to afford better hosting so there wouldn't be any slashdot effect.
One big run on sentence, with no punctuation, and nary a bit of capitalization makes it sound (when you read it) as if you are saying something quickly and out of breath. The only thing worse would be if you eliminated the spaces. Furthermore, you use an inflamatory word (blows), and you don't back up anything with links to prove your point. So, let's change this. Here is how I would have phrased your post, which likely wouldn't be marked as a troll:
The availability of these cases doesn't change the fact that BTX is a bad form factor. The only users of the form factor tend to be those running Xeons. Had they instead chose a different form factor coupled with Opterons, they likely would have found their servers performing better while producing less heat (thus saving electricity).
Notice the change in tone and wording. Notice the punctuation and capitalization. The links don't go anywhere, but for your assertions to "stick", you would want to supply reference URLs to make your point hold up. Lastly, I eliminated that last line digging at thetechzone's hosting, since it isn't relevant to the discussion at hand.
These simple changes, had they been performed (or something similar), would likely have garnered your post an "insightful", "interesting", or "informative" rating, up to and including +5 if you supplied the URLs to back up the assertions you were making. Try this next time you post. While everything you post may be the absolute truth, and even if you are an authority on the subject, your post will likely be marked as a troll unless you take your time, and back up your statements...
this doesn't really change the fact that BTX blows and that the only people who even need BTX are the ones running Xeon furnaces even though Opterons that cost the same perform up to twice as fast and produce less heat and use less electricity.
and for the number of ads that are at "thetechzone" i would think they would be able to afford better hosting so there wouldn't be any slashdot effect.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon