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GCN Home > 05/22/06 issue

GCN Lab Review | Get those desktops off those desktops

ClearCube blade PC system makes managing PCs easier with little drop in performance

By Greg Crowe, GCN Staff

Some of a network administrator’s worst headaches come from trying to maintain users’ computers. In a typical environment, if a system has a problem, a support person must to go to that PC’s location (which could be in a distant building) to fix it. This can waste a lot of time for several people.

Various improvements to this type of architecture are gaining attention. One such solution is the PC blade system. This is where a user’s PC is actually a blade system housed in a data center cage and connected to a desktop-based port device via the network.

The advantages of this type of system are numerous. It allows the administrator to standardize each system more easily. In addition, if a user has a problem, it can be resolved from an admin console and a backup system can be assigned to the affected user within seconds. No site visit required.

The GCN Lab recently tested the latest ClearCube Series R PC Blade system to see if it delivers on the technology’s promise. In short, we were as impressed as some agencies have been with blade PCs [GCN.com, Quickfind 579].

Dual-core blades

A single ClearCube cage takes up 3U in a 19-inch rack and houses eight blades, which are hot-swappable. Each blade has a 3.4-GHz dual-core Pentium 4 processor and 1GB of RAM—plenty of power for any application. Its 80GB hard drive leaves plenty of room for applications the system administrator installs.

The blades are all docked to a backplane that is in turn connected to what ClearCube calls the BackPack. The R4300 BackPack, which is the version we had for testing in the lab, is broken down into three interchangeable modules. The Connect Bay module has the C/ports that connect each blade directly to a desktop unit, plus a USB port. It also has daisychain connections for admin and spares.

More news on related topics: Communications / Networks, Hardware



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