Intel
Xeon 5030
Socket 771 Processor: $160
www.intel.com

For those who've been down on Intel's server and Workstation products over the past couple of years, take heart. The Bensley platform is here, and Intel is devoting special attention to the channel in a bid to recapture hearts lost to AMD's Opteron. One such effort is a rebate package to make FB-DIMMs more accessible to VAR partners. Another involves reseller-only SKUs, such as the Xeon 5030 processor.

The Xeon 5030 is all about value. Operating at 2.66 GHz and wielding two cores (each with 2MB of L2 cache), it is fast enough to power through software with aplomb. And priced at just over $150, you can easily build servers with two processors for those customers with a need for extra horsepower. At the same time, dual-socket boards afford you the freedom to sell single-processor configurations with room to grow. In both cases, the Xeon 5030 is a great value-oriented channel play.

Brother
PT-9500PC Computer
Label Printer: $299
www.brother-usa.com

There are plenty of reasons to buy a label printer, whether it's
for tagging inventory, labeling assets, or organizing shelves. Brother's PT-9500PC printer churns out sharp-looking laminated labels with adhesive backs on any number of swappable tape cartridges, automatically cutting them on the way out.

PC connectivity paves the way for several neat features. For example, you can save and recall your most frequently used designs, ordering up to 5,000 copies of the same label at a time. The PT-9500PC also supports True Type fonts along with underlining, framing, and several other formatting features. Brother's software even supports a long list of different bar-code symbologies to fit each customer's infrastructure.

Measuring less than eight inches deep, the PT-9500PC doesn't consume much desk space. Moreover, a USB hookup is perfect for mobile professionals. The price is right, consumables aren't particularly expensive, and the quality of Brother's thermal transfer printing is top notch.

ASUS
DSBF-D/SAS: $620
usa.asus.com

Intel only just launched its Bensley server/workstation platform and ASUS is already selling motherboards to go along with the Xeon 5000- and 5100-series processors. Of the company's four recent releases, one stands out as a well-balanced channel play for SMBs. ASUS' DSBF-D/SAS is loaded with useful features and is plenty expandable in case upgradeability is one of your customer's purchasing criteria.

Perhaps most noticeable are the board's six slots spanning 133 MHz PCI-X, standard PCI, PCI Express x8, and PCI Express x16. Less prominent but equally impressive, ASUS integrates IDE, six SATA 3 Gbps ports, and eight ports of SAS connectivity. Mix in two Gigabit Ethernet ports, a 16MB graphics controller, and room for up to 32GB of RAM and you have one extremely potent board at home in either a server or workstation. Naturally, 64-bit processing is supported, as is Intel's VT and I/O Acceleration technologies.

Belkin
Delphi Enclosure
Blower: $6,650
www.belkin.com

Thermal management isn't an option when you're working with dense racks of server equipment. And while most every server has its own set of heatsinks and fans, the combined heat output of even just a handful is enough to cause problems in an unventilated enclosure.

One of the easiest ways to modify an existing enclosure for better cooling is to add Belkin's Delphi Enclosure Blower, a 2U rack-mounted add-on that pulls cool air in from the bottom of a rack and blows it up the front, where each server's air intake vent is located.

According to Belkin, the blower is able to reduce any enclosure's ambient temperature by up to 15 degrees—a huge number when you're talking about the stability of mission-critical hardware. Though the $759 asking price might seem lofty, its value proposition increases when you distribute the cost across all of the systems it cools.

Bell Microproducts
Z-Box HZD4B 1.6 TB Desktop: $1,799
www.hammer-storage.com

Zetera's Z-SAN storage technology was first put through its paces with Netgear's mainstream Storage Central product. Now that it has proven itself on the desktop, the IP-based SAN-like protocol is making the transition to small and medium businesses through Bell Microproducts' Z-Box family.

Equipped with significantly more storage space, a better networking subsystem, and additional room for drives, the Z-Box is perfect for SMBs looking to add lots of backup capacity without knocking the budget out of whack. Each enclosure holds up to 2TB of SATA storage, divisible into RAID 0, 1, or 0+1 arrays. As your customer fills one enclosure, performance and size can be aggregated through a second relatively easily, all the way up to 128 petabytes (PB). Gigabit Ethernet networking helps maintain performance even as extra units are added.

The 1.6TB model is a significant investment for an SMB at $1,799. But as your customer's 300GB USB 2.0 direct-attached drives start filling up, the value of a larger networked solution becomes more apparent. That's where Bell's Z-Box really fits in.