Xeon Getting Smaller, Faster, More Powerful

There's a great market for these servers, said Lawrence Ling, president of QES Computers, a Pleasanton, Calif., systems integrator that builds servers and workstations for enterprises and SMB customers.

"The 1U servers are ideal for use as ISP servers. You can fit over 40 in one cabinet, giving double the quantity of servers with the same features, functions and power as 2U servers," Ling said. "Customers are very smart now. They know the components are the same [for white-box and brand-name servers, but the white-box servers come with 30 percent lower prices."

Amax Engineering, a Fremont, Calif.-based distributor and systems builder, just unveiled a 1U bare-bones server based on dual Xeon motherboards from San Jose, Calif.-based Supermicro Computer.

The motherboard in this new white-box server has an on-board SCSI controller based on the new Ultra 320 specifications, and a slot for Adaptec's credit card-size Ultra 160 SCSI RAID controller, said James Huang, product marketing manager at Amax. End-user pricing for a typical configuration runs about $2,718. An Ultra 320 version of the RAID controller is expected to be available later this year, he said.

The server can be ordered with no name or with the Amax brand, Huang said. Options include choice of processor up to 2.4GHz, four different hard-drive sizes, multiple DDR memory options up to 8 Gbytes, and a choice of operating system among Red Hat Linux 7.3, Windows 2000 Server and Windows XP Pro.

Amax currently offers its direct corporate customers online configuration of the company's whitebox servers, but solution providers must use the telephone for custom configurations, Huang said. This will change in the next two months, however, as Amax introduces an online reseller configurator for 30 to 40 of its systems, he said.

Meanwhile, Promicro Systems, a systems builder in Poway, Calif., will later this quarter offer 1U servers based on two Intel dual Xeon motherboards,one an entry-level board, the other including Intel Server Management version 5.1, company executives said.

Promicro currently offers an online quote request tool to solution providers but is still in the process of developing an online configurator, they said.