A Custom Approach To The Custom System Ecosystem

In the past year, the CRN Test Center has reviewed a number of components and new technologies that have been building up to what could be a robust market for custom, hardware-based appliances. These components scale up and down the price ladder and the performance spectrum.

Intel's Atom Platform. With a motherboard and processor built right in, micro-ATX chassis compatibility and an acquisition cost of less than $80 in many cases, the Atom should be about more than just netbooks. The Test Center has found that the Atom platform is perfect for low-complexity, low-cost, single-function deployments.

Open Source. Linux has come a long way in a few years, and there are so many great flavors for system builders that it's now essential in considering how to architect IT solutions. In particular, Ubuntu's ease of deployment, ease of integration of many applications and low cost (free!) are impossible to ignore. Consider that Ubuntu can be installed on a system in 20 minutes. Following that, it's possible to install the open source Wireshark bandwidth analyzer with a simple command in a few more minutes. The result: an inexpensive, simple-to-deploy network optimization appliance.

Solid State Drives (SSDs). This is storage that, right now, is more expensive to acquire than hard disk drives (HDDs), but it provides the advantage of having no moving parts, requires less energy to keep cool and makes less noise. As SSDs become more available in the market, and as they become more available at higher capacities, they will play a role in allowing deployment of specialized appliances without operational costs that can overwhelm an enterprise.

Technology vendors and open source communities have been especially helpful in easing complexity--a concern for solution providers and their customers in determining whether to deploy fixed-function appliances. In an Everything Channel State of Technology survey conducted earlier this year, 40 percent of solution providers surveyed said costs/budget were a top concern of customers. Even as the economy begins to rebound, costs and budget will continue to be a concern for them going forward.

That same State of Technology survey also found that 21 percent of solution providers surveyed found security to be a top concern, 16 percent said the same about redundancy and another 16 percent called reliability their greatest challenge. Custom appliances, with the latest set of building blocks, offer solution providers the opportunity to address all of those concerns.

Breaking It Down

When you get right down to it, most of the appliances on the market are boxes (usually with Linux) that have software installed on them.

With concerns about spending on both hardware and proprietary software, a growing community of system builders and hobbyists are building their own do-it-yourself systems that match the feature set and functionality of the more expensive turnkey offerings on the market.

Of course, not every type of appliance is ideal to try and build as a custom system. Take, for example, complex security products. The CRN Test Center has looked at scores of high-level database security appliances. Such appliances incorporate sophisticated software that can do behavioral analysis on everything and anything that's happening with an enterprise's database. Often, those appliances have stringent rules and policies in the box that adhere to compliance regulations such as PCI and HIPAA--regulations that are not only important for certain vertical industries to follow, but are also mandatory. For a system builder to create an appliance that emulates that level of database security may be a waste of time, and may not be in the best interest of a customer's security strategy.

Also, consider custom system building vs. purchasing turnkey devices that are engineered to do very specific tasks. One such product that comes to mind is RioRey's line of

devices that are designed to fight Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks. Although RioRey devices are simply hardened Linux boxes, the software residing on them is anything but simple. RioRey's software solution employs a number of algorithms to separate "good" network traffic from "bad" and performs microbehavioral analysis. A system builder would be hard-pressed in allocating the time, testing and coding it would take to emulate a custom system that does the same.

The Right Targets

In contrast, there are devices that are perfect candidates as custom-built systems. Routers, general Unified Threat Management devices (UTMs), storage and bandwidth analyzers are some examples. System builders can often create these devices as custom systems, at far less or no additional cost than proprietary ones, and can often customize them in ways not possible with on-the-market devices.

Custom router building is popular. Many system builders simply use a nondescript Linux server and add the functionality of a router. The server has to be multihomed, with a network interface for external traffic and one for internal network traffic. All that's really required is some familiarity with routing tables and firewall rules, and there is certainly no shortage of documentation online available, even for DIY newbies.

Many system builders are also creating custom UTMs. One open source product that is a popular option for this: Untangle.

Untangle is an open source network gateway platform that installs on basic hardware and provides a plethora of free applications. Some of these applications include antimalware, antispam, firewall, IPS/IDS, reporting and automatic software upgrades. The hardware specs required to run Untangle are such that a system builder could use an older machine that may be on hand. Recommended specs include a P4 processor, 1-GB RAM and a 80-GB hard drive--specs that a typical low-end notebook surpasses today. Consider that Untangle is offered for free (the professional version offers the same feature set plus some extended enterprise features), and can be installed on an older machine for a robust, virtually free security offering that is perfect for the SMB.

The Bottom Line

Of course, the possibilities with custom systems are endless. With the increase in spending awareness and an increasing interest in open source in the corporate IT world, custom systems may become the norm for some technologies rather than the exception.

The total addressable market for custom appliances has yet to be measured in a credible way, but the dedicated appliance space itself is a several-billion-dollars-a-year segment. Tier-one vendors from EMC to Dell to HP to Cisco have successfully entered the appliance space as a way to extend their core offerings. Still, the system builder space has yet to take full advantage of the potential for both delivering great value and growing a system builder's business.

During the next year, it will be important to keep up with developments in the ecosystem, notably with Intel's Nehalem and Atom platforms as well as with the regulatory/compliance environment and Tier 1 pricing landscape in areas such as security and storage appliances. In the PC and server space, system builders have always been available to jump in with flexible and often lower-cost solutions. The time is now for them to take advantage of the opportunity in custom appliances.