thin as a blade

With some of the websites that I have produced in the past, I have had clients whose online business needs dictate dedicated redundant servers in a monitored and physically staffed hosting location. In many cases, some opted for collocated servers, but many businesses couldn't get past the idea of paying for an entire rack for 1U or 2U server unit. Sure, they could just pay for a space or two, but then they could be "sharing" a rack with anyone - something that certain overly nervous business-owners can be a little wary of. One idea that a few businesses I knew chose to participate in was a rack "coop" idea, in which several businesses might pool their money to rent a locking rack that their servers could be mounted in, without the concern of "unknown" other business technicians getting into the rack and possible "messing with" the wrong server.

As large scale telecommunications and data networking trends continue to fit more and more traffic throughput into smaller physical storage spaces, the "coop" idea has an even greater advantage for businesses who might want to rent a rack space, share the cost of the common cards of a server unit, and purchase their own "blades" or cards instead of full rack modules. Of course, you need to make sure that you trust your coop partners!

Large corporations, on the other hand, can take advantage of this "blade" technology to mount an entire office worth of PCs in one central cabinet (or two, if they are looking for redundancy). One such company currently offering this type of "blade PC" technology is a company called ClearCube. With their current Thin Client offering, they allow a corporation to maintain PCs in a secure location, away from self-appointed "tech-savvy" employees who might otherwise install non-approved devices in their PCs (like DVD burners) or try to take their PCs out of the office.

One common misconception with small form-factor PC blades is that they don't carry powerful processors like their bulky desktop brethren, but the ClearCube cards carry Intel Dual-Core and Xeon processors. Best of all, these systems can be managed remotely and accessed via web browser by users, as needed.