ASUS
P5M2/SAS ATX Server Motherboard: $319
www.asus.com

AT FIRST BLUSH, INTEL'S XEOn 3000 SERVER PLATFORM LOOKS A LOT like
the desktop Core 2 Duo systems you already sell. But the SMB-oriented motherboards designed to complement the 3000-series chips tell a different tale. Take ASUS' P5M2/SAS as an example. Although it fits in a conventional ATX chassis and hosts an LGA775 socket, the board comes with Intel's 3000 MCH and 6702 PXH 64-bit hub. The two components together give you features like PCI-X connectivity. To that, ASUS adds a special SO-DIMM slot, dual Gigabit Ethernet controllers, and an ATI ES1000 graphics controller.

ASUS cranks the P5M2's server appeal up a notch by building in an eight-port LSI 1068 SAS HBA. RAID 0, 1, and 1E work out of the box, and an optional zero-channel upgrade card makes RAID 5 available to those who want it. As the foundation for an entry-level server, the P5M2/SAS and a dual-core Xeon processor are a truly powerful combination.

Exabyte
VXA-320 Packet Tape Drive: $1,585
www.exabyte.com

WHEN YOU'RE SELLING SBS servers, the cool thing to do is add an external hard drive and backup application to the deal, addressing data protection concerns right off the bat. I'm even guilty of pretending that tape doesn't exist when a customer starts asking about saving critical information on a nightly basis. But just because it's less popular in a world full of 750GB drives and eSATA, don't write off the advantages of tape. Tape backup has the long-standing support many stability-minded businesses covet, and its cost-per-megabyte is still attractively low.

Exabyte's VXA-320 should be enough to renew your interest in the mature media interface. The drive accepts three cartridge sizes, the largest housing 320GB per tape. It communicates over a SCSI connection, enabling up to 86GB per hour of data. One version of the drive features Yosemite's TapeWare software and another features the hardware only, letting you bundle your favorite backup app. Exabyte sells the drive as either an external component or as an internal kit. So resellers really have a lot of freedom to integrate the latest tape technology a number of ways.

Adobe
Photoshop Lightroom: $299
www.adobe.com

It's no secret that Adobe'S Photoshop is perhaps the most
powerful image-editing software your customer can buy. It's also no secret that there's a substantial learning curve tied to getting solid results from time spent in Photoshop. In an effort to streamline some of what Photoshop does, Adobe launched Lightroom. And although it adds an extra $299 to Photoshop's aggressive asking price, the workflow improvements Lightroom introduces should easily help recoup its cost.

Adobe recently unveiled Lightroom as a companion to Photoshop, capable of performing many of the same tasks, but with an emphasis on efficiency. Lightroom facilitates automatic file renaming, organization, and the addition of metadata. It'll globally adjust white balance and exposure, too. After your customer adjusts each image individually in Photoshop, Lightroom assembles contact sheets and slide shows for presentation—both valuable to the photographer wanting to put a best foot forward. More than anything, Lightroom will save your customer valuable time.

EMC
InstaSAN 2 Gbps Connectivity Kit: $3,400
www.emcinsignia.com

ISCSI may be popular, but fibre channel is stll undeniably better suited to organizations sensitive to performance since it runs at speeds of either 4 Gbps or 2 Gbps.

Knowing full well that a from-scratch Fibre Channel infrastructure would be out of the question for many SMBs, EMC's small and medium business-oriented Insignia arm created the InstaSAN lineup. There's enough hardware in the 2 Gbps kit to share one SAN device between two servers, including a Brocade eight-port FC switch, two Emulex PCI-X FC HBAs, eight 2 Gbps transceivers, and three five-meter cable runs. The kit is certified by Microsoft as being compatible with Simple SAN for Windows Server 2003, and according to EMC, it can be installed in mere minutes. At $3,400, EMC's simplified FC offering is still pricier than an iSCSI foundation, but when performance is the principle concern, the InstaSAN puts the parts you need in one place.

Imation
D20 Disc Publisher: $1,500
www.imation.com

FIRST IMPRESSIONS MEAN A LOT, AND THAT'S WHY A PROFESSIONAL business card goes a long way. By the same token, the discs your customers hand out, whether for support or marketing or as a self-contained product, should look just as professional. Handwritten generic CDs scream "cheap and lazy." Imation's D20 disc publisher can help those clients with moderate disc distribution needs to project an upscale image instead.

The D20 holds up to 20 discs, automatically duplicating and printing to the surface of printable media. It'll write DVDs at up to 16x, dual-layer discs at 8x, and CDs at 40x. So long as you have a spare USB 2.0 port, compatibility is a snap. Quality from the printer is equally impressive. Imation claims the D20 prints at 4,800 dpi, generating up to 16.7 million colors. Best of all, when you combine the printer with Imation's AquaGuard media, your discs resist coffee accidents and Mountain Dew spills.