Solid-State Storage: More Choice Means Better Options

Intel Adds SSD Value. The sub-$100 X25-V was a first attempt to make SSDs more mainstream. A 40 GB capacity point easily held an operating system and several performance-sensitive apps. Once upon a time, solid state drives were available in one flavor: fast and expensive. The problem was, early in the development of solid state technology, there was no guarantee that customers spending hundreds of dollars on flash-based storage could count on consistent performance or a long, useful life. Today’s SSDs are significantly more mature. And with that maturity, manufacturers have figured out how to differentiate based on the speed, capacity, and form factor of their respective solid-state drives. Although SSDs remain expensive, greater diversity means you’re more likely to find a solution that works for your customer.

Build Your PCs On Better Platforms

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Enabling More I/O. Intel’s P67 Express platform incorporates eight PCI Express lanes running at 5 GT/s to support high-bandwidth SATA 6Gb/s and USB 3.0 controllers without creating bottlenecks. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of a new processor microarchitecture. After all, that’s where fresh features and updated performance attributes come from. But you can’t forget that at the heart of every dependable PC is a chipset that facilitates communication between the components that compose it. Intel’s second-generation Core processors sit comfortably at the top of the mainstream desktop performance charts. After the company’s Z68 Express chipset launch, however, VARs now have a greater number of platform options available on which to build potent systems.

Whether they know it or not, every small business wants the technology that was actually designed for businesses. The problem everyone perceives is that higher-end hardware costs more money. So, resellers have a tendency to fall back on desktop components to build entry-level servers.

Don't feel bad—tier-ones do it too. But the days of Core-based machines masquerading as servers can come to end, thanks to the new Xeon E3-1200-based platforms. Now you can arm your customers with a real Xeon CPU, DDR3 memory able to check and correct errors, and a genuine Intel server motherboard for about the same price as a desktop system sporting comparable performance.

This is the year that resellers see six gigabit SAS and SATA storage technology take off. But the transition isn't being fueled by a need for more performance, which would only help customers with high-end needs. Instead six gig is a home run for every business because it accommodates more drives per physical port, saving money across the board.

This is the year that resellers see six gigabit SAS and SATA storage technology take off. But the transition isn't being fueled by a need for more performance, which would only help customers with high-end needs. Instead six gig is a home run for every business because it accommodates more drives per physical port, saving money across the board.

First off, Happy New Year! We have lots of good things in store for the channel over the next year but I want to stop for a minute and talk about something we touched on last year.

In presentations, at customer meetings, and at end user events, just to name a few, we talk about all the testing we do on our products before they go to market and that testing is evident in the compatibility when using Intel verified technology but seeing is believing. How do we test? Where do we test? Who does the testing?

We took our cameras into the mechanical test labs at Intel’s Dupont Washington facility and I think the videos we created from our visit go a long way to speaking to Intel’s dedication to “doing it right”. You look around and see - there is a considerable investment in space, equipment and people, but this is what you have to do to do it right, especially in this day and age. This economy is all about getting the job done and technology that doesn't work just won't cut it.