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March 2007 |
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Serious Engineering and Reliability - World Class for New Zealand...
New Zealand has had the luxury of having world class engineering at close to commodity pricing for many years and yet not many people have taken advantage of it or even know about it. Why is that? What are we talking about here? We talk about the joint force of Supermicro and Compucon for New Zealand. The public may know about the brands of IBM, HP, Dell and Acer but not Supermicro or Compucon. The technology sector is however different. Most people know about Supermicro and Compucon and place both names above the centre of gravity of the four leading name brands. The situation as we have observed is a case of marketing over-shadowing engineering. Supermicro is the engine behind most world class technology companies and those vehicles with the Supermicro engine are not cheap at all. They may not be Porsche or Rolex, but they are Boeing 747 or Air Bus 330. They are highly heavy duty and dependable. Supermicro engines are based on serious engineering and have consistently passed the test of time. Compucon assumes a similar stance as the quiet workhorse behind the scene. The effort Compucon spends in technology development research, driver optimisation and production quality assurance is second to no other PC builder in New Zealand or may be the rest of the world. The effort does produce results in the name of serious reliability. Despite the availability of serious engineering and serious reliability, not many people know about it. Compucon does not have the scale and economies to do advertising and New Zealand is too small a market for Supermicro to focus any advertising campaign on. We have to continue to work quietly in the background and those channel members who know about this pearl-in-the-hay secret will continue to have an edge. Very recently, a veteran IT service provider suddenly found that Compucon SX Workgroup Server is cheaper to buy than upgrading a new 3.0GHz Dempsey Xeon based HP system to an equivalent spec. SX is based on the cool and effective Core 2 Dual technology whereas Dempsey is based on the hot, electricity hungry, ineffective and phased-out Netburst technology. The finding is a big and pleasant surprise but it is there if you wish to find it. This article serves as a waking up call to those who need one.
Compucon Diamond Shining through Hay
We reported last time that G965 for Superhawk is waiting at the gate (tests passed but supply not available). In the meantime, VIA has released P4M900 chipset to succeed P4M890 which is currently used in Diamond and SIT (Superhawk-in-Transit). P4M900 simply confirms the support of Conroe FSB (front side bus) up to 1066MHz and DDR2 memory up to 677MHz. The significance is in it being the 2nd generation chipset for Conroe support and it should be more efficient than P4M890 for Conroe (Reference: We needed to go through extra firmware revisions to get P4M890 to be stable for Conroe). Furthermore, Microsoft has formally certified P4M900 as Vista compliant (Reference: K8M890 being used for Jasper is also Vista compliant certified). We will upgrade Diamond to the new chipset very shortly and this may keep the gate closed for G965 for longer. Use P965 based Superhawk Plus if you need more performance than SIT.
CAST Training Course 28/3/07 Reminder
Registration for the training course will close by this Tuesday as the course is practically fully subscribed by this time and we can take 1 or 2 more only. This article serves more as a reminder than an invitation to register. The course will start promptly so please arrive in Compucon House on time for your morning coffee. It is a full day of hard work but we are confident that participants will find the day useful in setting the pace for being an efficient technician for a long time to come.
- 11:00am - Opening address & methodologies
- 11:20am - Chipsets
- 12:20pm - Compucon design & QA processes
- 1:10pm - Finger Food Lunch provided by Compucon
- 2:00pm - Windows System Software set up
- 3:00pm - RAID building & Rebuilding
- 4:00pm - Coffee break
- 4:30pm - Remote management
- 5:30pm - Technical support: PSU, HDD, POST, HCT...
- 6:30pm - Tests, Q&A
- 7:00pm - Wine & Cheese
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March 2007 |
(For Principals & ICT Directors)
It is common sense to say that the level of ICT expertise in a school is dependent on its dispensable budget for implementing ICT as tools for learning, teaching and school administration. At one end of the spectrum, there are schools with absolutely no in-house ICT expertise and they depend on low frequency low expertise IT service provider calls to make do. At the other end of the spectrum, there are schools with in-house ICT managers and technicians with further access to outside consultants as needed. The big variation indicates not just a budgetary issue but an attitude or core belief issue. How high ICT is on the school agenda is subject to individual school directions. However, how high ICT should be on the school agenda should be an educational agenda. Another important aspect is whether the arrangements in place are fit for purposes and provide the highest possible return to the school for the spend. Feel free to raise your ideas with
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and we will discuss further as desired.
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March 2007 |
(For IT Managers)
Owing to the appeal of price and the irresponsible behaviour of some salesmen, many businesses and schools have gone to the extent of purchasing or using Beefed Up PC for server purposes. A Beefed Up PC refers to a computer that is designed and built for single user desktop use. A server refers to a computer that is designed and built for supporting a group or all users on the network. A server needs to be fast responding to multiple user requests and yet extremely reliable and scalable for user population growth. The above criteria previously resulted in a big divide in prices for the two classes of computers. Since purchase price is a key factor for many schools, it is not surprising that some schools have ended up with Beefed Up PC servers. Compucon has recognised the situation and come up with a low cost Genuine Server Grade product called SX Workgroup Server. It is based on Single Xeon with single, dual or quad cores. It supports 8GB RAM, plenty of server class PCI-X expansion slots and RAID for storage etc. The motherboard PCB is 6 layers server-grade. It has pedestal and rack-mounted options. More appealing is the provision of in-band and out-band remote monitoring capabilities. Lastly, the price is reasonable. Please see www.compucon.co.nz or email
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for information.
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March 2007 |
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(For Network Administrators)
In the last Compucon Education Forum of November 2006, we have briefly introduced Remote Monitoring technologies- monitoring by HTTPS, alerts by email and access by VPN. Compucon has since mastered the technology further and is ready to offer Remote Server Monitoring to schools right now using open standards, low cost, secure and powerful technologies. The Compucon scheme consists of 2 levels of monitoring and control- with Windows operating system running and not running.
A piece of Windows based software called Super Doctor provides all system hardware health monitoring, performance tracking, Windows OS level event logs information, alarm alerting and rebooting control on an easy to read graphical user interface. The screen can be on a desktop of the local network or through HTTP remotely such as from home or Compucon House. Standards used are WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) and SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol). All Compucon Servers are bundled with this software. The attached slides provide details of the services provided.
The more advanced tool is based on open standard IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) Version 2.0 for pre-OS monitoring and control. The tool consists of dedicated hardware and IPMI View software. The hardware has its own processor, firmware and network interface. It lives on 5V and operates even when the server is powered off on the front panel. The software is OS independent and is capable of editing the BIOS and stopping and starting the server remotely. A further advanced component is KVM over IP. It allows the remote admin person to take direct control of the server over the Internet. IPMI has a small price premium.
Compucon intends to provide remote monitoring and control of Compucon Servers from Compucon House for schools for one year free of charge. We will either train up school staff to take over or continue to offer the service depending whichever arrangement is fit for purpose.
See also:  Super Doctor III (Compucon Channel Members only)
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March 2007 |
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Intel has definitely confirmed acceptance of the new rules of the game previously introduced by AMD. The new rules are about CPU performance enhancements based on the number of cores and the reduction of energy consumption. On the multi-core front, Intel has won a battle for being the first to ...
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