Dell challenges blades with rack workstation
Better than a blade?
Dell has launched a rack workstation to challenge blade workstations.
The advantage is that the hardware, and data, is kept in a central server room or data centre and so is more secure. The architecture also removes heat and noise usually created by desktop machine from the working environment.
Prices start at $1,869 (£936). The boxes, called Precision R5400, have dual and quad Xeon processors, two PCIe OpenGL graphics cards and support PCI and PCIx.
The company also announced the Dell FX100 remote access solution, which claims to provide hardware based encryption and compression with no impact on performance. This includes a "portal device" for users to plug peripherals into.
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COMMENTS
Hardly a KVM Product - It's Datacenter hosted computing
This uses Teradici PC-Over-IP, so it works over a standard IP network, NOT CAT6 dedicated cables. Granted you could put that part of the IP remoting on it's own network, but it's fully routable. www.teradici.com
So it's NOT like the propriety transfer KVM products. Teradici has more focused on remote hosted systems delivering a 1:1 PC experience. IP KVM solutions is a niche product Hosting your workstations in the datacenter and having a low power device (or monitor with PC over IP) is a huge step forward.
This delivers true GPU pixel performance over IP (dual head per Teradici chip). This is not crummy 15fps jerky blurry video, but full 60fps 1920x1200. No solution does that today. TTY it isn't. RDP cannot deliver that (from what I saw on the Teradici demo at a show it had RDP support on the portal if you want it)
I've seen it at events and people I know evaluating it, it does what it says. None of the Avocent or other solutions that try to do this via IP-KVM comes close on the image quality,, plus PC over IP delivers full USB support from the portal.
People I know in the broker/trading floor environments are the key guys here as they need to relocate data centers to cheaper quarters... (e.g. expensive datacenters in high rise buildings are going to be a no go with financial customer cut backs)... PC over IP allows you to move your datacenter out of building and with proper fiber connectivity deliver desktops and ALSO provide for DR/disaster recovery.
Hardly anything a KVM product is useable for.
There is a Samsung monitor with PC over IP
It was shown at Infocomm in Vegas... Heard it is to be out in September. So all you need at the desktop is the Samsung monitor, Ethernet plugs into it and your desktop USB devices (keyboard, mouse, webcam, etc, etc) All get redirected to the host to look as if it was plugged in at the host side.
Cool thing was the Samsung monitor had a DVI out to plug in a 2nd head monitor, so one Samsung PC over IP monitor can display it self and a 2nd monitor connected on the host.
We're looking forward to this for digital signage.. no more shoving the PC in the back of the panel or having a crummy RDP protocol.
Why has no-one thought of this before?
Seems such an obvious setup, if my understanding is correct, to utilise an existing cat6 connection for video and control only. Thus keeping access to your actual network in the server room. No more people hooking up unathorised kit, great!
But why the extra box? Surely they could have combined it in a monitor or don't Dell rate their own displays that highly?
So, they've won a big contract
This is a very niche product.
Had the terminal device included RCP or ICA or even an X-Server with an embedded browser then it could have been interesting in the “Network Computer” space.. but it isn’t.. it’s KVM with graphics over Ethernet.
Clearly they’ve won a big engineering/spook contract because GPGPU is the only bit you can’t do as cheaply with a WinTerm.. but for news.. there is nothing new in this that a 3278 terminal didn’t do 30 years ago
