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A Server That Can Fall From the Sky, and Survive
alphadogg writes "A rugged server from NCS Technologies introduced on Friday can withstand drops, will work in extreme temperatures and can be deployed via parachute into crisis areas or war zones if needed. The Bunker XRV-5241 is a 1U rack server designed for organizations such as the military and first responders that need servers in rugged environments. The server has been tested to meet U.S. Department of Defense specifications for environmental, temperature and shock requirements." Hope they drop some hardened screens, too, to help with setup.
This is perfect for me. When my girlfriend goes nuts, she throws everything around, including computers. She broke a few already. My thinkpad T-43 amazingly survived a few hits from her.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Needs pictures of the inside so we can see what makes it so rugged, but not even the manufacturer website has internal pictures, and the outside is just a generic 1U server.
when one of these things accidentally drops on someone below and the official report is death from "server overhead."
Bah, only +50 Celsius. Quite useless in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Siria...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Show me one computer that cannot be dropped safely if appropriately packaged.
PC World has the same press release, but with useless exterior pics of the pizzabox. It's captain-obvious that all 1U servers look pretty much the same outside. Guess those are good for a primary audience that finds servers exotic, but where's the article-relevant innards? And the drop case.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2026354/new-server-can-be-parachuted-into-war-zones.html
The problem is parachuting in the nerdy IT guy to set it up plus his supply of Code Red Mountain Dew and Doritos. So far, tests of their survivability has been dismal.
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This wouldn't work for me, because the only thing that keeps some of my servers from misbehaving is the fact that they know I can drop-kick it down the stairwell if it acts up one more time.
Back in the nineties, when I was younger and working for a large computer supplier, they already have their PC (could be a small server as well) ruggerized to survive drop from helicopter platforms, mosquitoes invasions and chopped mosquitoes jam in cooling fan intakes and so one. Well, maybe it wasn't supporting extreme temperatures, I don't remember, that a few decades ago and yes, they were designed for the exactly same customer.
Achille Talon
Hop!
> Hope they drop some hardened screens, too, to help with setup.
No screens but don't worry: it comes with SIRI!
They can fall from the sky! ..But of course they have to be deployed via Air Freight.
Thanks slashdot, for yet another misleading headline disguised as news.
> Hope they drop some hardened screens, too, to help with setup.
Sorry but what about disk images with ssh all set up and ready to go before throwing it from the plane? Most servers I have root on are thousands of kilometers away. The closest is about 600km from this screen and keyboard.
realkiwi
death from sticker shock :)
We don't need to actually deploy these, just get our enemies to deploy them with 0 down, then send them the bill a few weeks later.
'Entire command staff wiped out by sticker shock!'
They're called 'grunts'. :)
Ah, so these are the servers behind those still-functional-after-hundreds-of-years terminals in our future post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland!
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
They should totally make a movie about this. They could call it Skyfall.
Finally, S.H.I.E.L.D. technology released to the general public.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
I see fans and a more-or-less standard case.
So fucking what? Build it like a tactical radio, with a cast. finned case with no vents and passive cooling then I'll be impressed.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Falling servers from the sky
Fearless LANs with bandwidth high
PCs link by night and day
Rugged racks in a tough array.
They can drop it from the sky with a parachute and it will not break? What will they come up next?
Deployment of the parachute will be the biggest force. A skydyver will have 3-4G for a few seconds.. Military will got to about 8G.
Considering that the servers will most likely not running, I am sure that the average packing for shipment should be enough. Just see that there are no moving parts and you should be able to get a lot more durability.
My guess is that the real damage will happen when some person drops it from the table during installation, not when it comes down on a parachute.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Wow, cloud computing is becoming more reliable then ever!
Doh,
It's on western coast, everybody and his uncle who's been living there knows that coastal areas are much cooler due the sea than the central parts, which Rub' al Khali (ie. empty quarter) is so hot every damn year that asphalt roads don't last over summer. Wikipedia lists temperatures reaching "as high as 56C", but I can assure you that it gets IRL much higher locations where wind (shamal) does not reach.
Somewhere at DoD:
Guys, I wanted you to build one thing, ONE thing only and you screwed up!
I wanted server capable of running SkyDrive, not one capable of Skydive!
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
I was going to post that the military shock requirements for transport are MIL-810 and that's only a 2m drop on any surf/edge/corner without operational damage, but it turns out, it doesn't even meet that spec without requiring extra packaging:
"The Bunker XRV-5241 can withstand a free-fall drop of around 1 meter, but for parachute deployment it needs to be packaged into the case for additional protection."
You know, we can package inertial guidance mechanisms (some of the most shock sensitive components you're likely to ship, which have about 1/5th the shock resistance of a china plate) to meet MIL-810, so if you're going to require that we add special packing to meet the basic transport spec we may as well not spend $4k on this and save the money for packing.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
From Law and Visas - Good comments Thanks guys
...any server can survive a parachute drop as long as it is powered down, it will need some protection but hardly any more than a human.
Any standard harddrive survive about 300 Gs for 2 ms in unpowered state (taken from Seagate Barracuda specs.), the same disk can survivie 80 Gs in operational state (this is a 7200 RPM SATA drive). A server harddrive is a little worse, only 250 Gs nonoperational and 60 Gs operational (Seagate Cheetah 15K).
Sorry, first responders don't need fucking servers. They need life-saving equipment, not a database headache when they try to start defibrillating someone.
Oh, this is slashdot, where we try to sensationalize everything and fucking spew ads as stories for any company that makes a computer related product, even when it's fucking useless.
Dropped from the sky by Parachute is supposed to tell me it's rugged? We had about 300 kids design systems at home to protect eggs dropped from a helicopter when I was highschool. I do not find this impressive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7aP5iqZRfY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gnjb1WVkhmU
You decide...
* :)
APK
P.S.=> I, for one, am glad to see it - @ least the boys in the service get the benefit of a BETTER, stronger technology vs. damage, hopefully (even though there's times I *think* they're only serving the purposes of "the controllers" with the Holy Dollar/Ca$h)...
... apk
Is this a shill post? How is this news? I have windows equipment that will operate in worse conditions.
sound rugged - but can it survive buggy code, malware, virii and stupid admin?
Can't wait to see the "2-hour delivery" radio button on their checkout page.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
So far, with my inattentive glance through comments, I don't see cat pee mentioned anywhere.
Why do they need 500W for a 1U chassis that accommodates only two low voltage (60W for 6 core, 70W for 8 core) Xeons, 4 2.5" drives and 8 DIMM's?
That's only ~250W of peak load.
Exactly.. cooling is a solvable problem, after a fashion. But it's like stuff for spaceflight.. no cooling fans pulling in outside air.. Conduction cooling to big fins on the outside is the only way to deal with it.
S.H.I.E.L.D. technology released to the general public.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Somebody flung a Dell Dimension L733r out of the second story into my backyard about 10 years ago. It still worked and still runs a telephony application when needed. The only discernible damage, other than grass stain, was that one of the plastic clips holding the motherboard in place broke. The remaining clips have been sufficient.