ClearCube's new I/Ports, C/Ports, and workstation cards looked great when they arrived at our test lab. The desktop-oriented C/Port modules are still fanless and can talk back to the blade's brain counterparts as far as 200 meters over Cat 5.
On top of these, ClearCube added the missing component it needed to run a connection over truly long distances: Microsoft Remote Desktop. The tricky part here is that Microsoft Terminal Server functions by taking a limited resource and slicing it thinner and thinner with each additional client. ClearCube manages this with a high-density backend; bolstered by grid-style CPU pooling that alleviates the problems inherent in Terminal Server's time-sharing scheme.
Users' desktop setups stay mostly the same; for true telecommuting tasks, the new I/Port i8010 is based on an embedded Linux platform that provides only remote desktop capability. Meanwhile, the i8800 is based on embedded Windows XP and provides just enough Windows functionality to support VPNs and local printer support in addition to Remote Desktop.
Making I/Ports function as fully powered workstations is the job of a ClearCube PC Blade, and the company has upgraded the blades almost continuously during the past year. There are two basic varieties, the R1200 and the R2100; which one you choose will depend on whether your users require standard desktop power or a more muscular workstation.
The R1200 is the more mainstream blade, with Intel Pentium 4 (3.4GHz with HT) processors, as much as 2GB RAM, and an Intel Extreme Graphics subsystem all attached to a single ATA-based disk subsystem (as much as 120GB). The R2100, affectionately called the "Fatboy" or the "double-wide," is a double-sized blade carrying dual 3.06GHz Intel Xeon CPUs, as much as 4GB RAM; a high-end, NVIDIA-based graphics subsystem; dual, gigabit-capable network connections; and other workstation-style tidbits, including a disk size as large as 120GB. Both cards can support multi-display options for hooking up as many as four displays to a single C/Port. |
