AMD
Opteron 8358 SE Quad-Core Processor: $1,899
www.amd.com

We’re still waiting for AMD to shift to the 45nm manufacturing process we’ve been hearing about for so long. When that happens, the company will make some minor architectural improvements and hopefully add some clock speed to its desktop and enterprise lineups. But until then, AMD is still in a commanding position when it comes to multi-core server and workstation configurations—despite the beating its Phenom is taking in desktop performance benchmarks.

The quad-core Opteron 8358 SE centers on a familiar Barcelona design. It runs at 2.4 GHz and sports 2MB of L3 cache to go along with its four 512KB L2 caches. In 1P configurations, Opteron is able to handle business in enterprise workloads by virtue of its native quad-core design and integrated memory controller. But the 8358 SE is optimized for four- and eight-way designs, where the HyperTransport interconnect helps AMD’s architecture scale particularly well. Even as Intel excels on the desktop, bear in mind that AMD’s CPUs are still a dominant force for servers and workstations.

Tripp Lite
SU1500XL Single-Phase Online UPS: $649
www.tripplite.com

No matter what sort of investment your SMB customer has made into IT, it’s important that he be protected from power problems with a solid online UPS. An online design is perhaps the most reliable architecture you can offer, as its batteries are always providing power to attached equipment. Current coming from the wall continually charges those batteries, so when the power goes out, they simply stop being charged. There’s no transfer switch to trip—instead, the online UPS is a steadfast barrier between incoming power and sensitive equipment.

Tripp Lite’s SU1500XL is a particularly attractive online model because it ducks in at 1,500VA, serving a maximum load of about 1,200W. That’s the limit for a conventional 15A breaker. So, the SU1500XL really offers the best of both worlds—the highest-end power protection in a convenient package that can interface with any wall socket. It boasts six output sockets—all protected for up to 4.5 minutes under full load—and a $250,000 equipment protection guarantee.

Iomega
StorCenter Pro NAS 200rL 4TB: $2,699
www.iomega.com

The price of storage is dropping all the time, as Iomega’s recently-unveiled 4TB rack-mounted NAS device demonstrates. Purportedly the successor of the StorCenter Pro 400r, this new Pro 200rL populates a single unit of rack space and drives a lightweight Linux kernel using an Intel Celeron D352 at 3.2 GHz, 512MB of DDR2 memory, and a Gigabit Ethernet connection.

Naturally, its four 1TB drives are hot-swappable, and the onboard storage controller supports RAID 0, 0+1, 5, and JBOD modes. Notably missing is RAID 1. However, given the quartet of drives Iomega is offering, we’d much rather put that Celeron to good use calculating parity with a safer RAID 5 configuration.

Bundled software (on top of the Linux kernel) includes Iomega’s Discovery Tool Pro and EMC’s Retrospect Express with five client licenses. Getting the NAS set up for backup is consequently a piece of cake. It’s up to the reseller to get it configured for centralizing data as well.