McAfee
IntruShield Security Manager Appliance: $319
www.mcafee.com

AS SMBS GROW, IT MAKES MORE SENSE TO MANAGE THEIR SECURITY
needs with one hardware appliance rather than using a handful of software packages. McAfee's IntruShield handles intrusion prevention using a slim, 1U, rack-mounted appliance manageable from anywhere. Out of the box, the IntruShield comes configured with a number of pre-defined security policies that can be customized to block hundreds of different types of attacks. An alert manager tracks those threats in realtime for IT staffers to see and act upon. As McAfee introduces updates to the appliance, it automatically updates itself without having to reboot or initialize a download.

Installation of the appliance is wizard-based and painless. According to McAfee, new intrusion prevention sensors can be added to the ISM in about three minutes. Because the ISM tops out at six sensors, it's very well suited for SMB networks and enterprise branch offices.

Buffalo
TeraStation Pro II: $1,699
www.buffalotech.com

AFTER SUFFERING A catastrophic hard drive failure on one of his workstations, I recently had a customer ask me about migrating to a server setup for centralizing data. Although his heart was in the right place, the size of his operation didn't quite warrant an expensive upgrade like that, in my opinion. Instead, I pointed the architect in the direction of Buffalo's TeraStation Pro II, a network attached storage device with up to 2TB of hard drive space spread across four hard drive bays. Of course, he wanted to protect against another mechanical failure, so he was most interested in taking advantage of the enclosure's built-in support for RAID 1, though it also does RAID 0, RAID 5, and RAID 10.

A Gigabit Ethernet controller connects the TeraStation to your customer's network for super-fast access to files while two USB 2.0 ports enable connectivity to external hard drives—potential backup targets for saved data.

INTEL
Xeon X3220 Quad-Core Processor: $1,109
www.intel.com

IF YOU THOUGHT THERE WAS A real value sell in Intel's dual-core, single-socket Xeon 3000-series processors, just wait until one of the new X3200-series chips drops into your shop. The X3220 is Intel's 1P flagship designed to plug into an LGA775 socket on a motherboard equipped with an Intel 3000 chipset. The processor runs at 2.4 GHz, is manufactured on a 65nm process, and includes all of the Intel acronyms you'd expect from any brand new chip: EIST, XD, EM64T, and VT. But the X32220's principal selling point is its four cores and 8MB of L2 cache.

The implications of Intel's X3220 are huge. Whereas SMBs once paid premium dollar for servers with two processors, they now have access to entry-level platforms, priced accordingly, that sport four physical processing cores and more cache than many enterprise-class chips. And because the X3220 is built on 65nm etching, it still manages to duck in under the power demands of older NetBurst-based Xeons.

SonicWALL
PRO 1260 UTM/Firewall/VPN: $1,099
www.sonicwall.com

MOST OF THE SBS 2003 NETWORKS I DEPLOY HAVE AN INTERNET
connection running into a server with another Ethernet controller outputting to a switch linked to any number of attached workstations. For an extra bit of security (or if you aren't comfortable tweaking ISA Server), put a hardware firewall in front of the server exposed to who knows how many malicious machines.

SonicWALL's PRO 1260 is the ideal SMB security appliance, in part because it's affordable and also because it includes a load of functionality that'll keep business customers safer from attacks. For example, the switch's 24 ports can each be independently configured according to different security zones. The stock PRO 1260 includes five VPN client licenses and 25 site-to-site policies. Available upsells include an Enhanced OS, an antivirus security service, content filtering, and global security. The 1260 lets you add as much or as little functionality as your customer needs.

MSI Computer
K8N Master2-FAR Workstation Motherboard: $249
www.msicomputer.com

THE BEAUTY OF AMD'S SOCKET INFRASTRUCTURE IS ITS LONGEVITY. The
very first Opteron CPUs fit into a Socket 940 interface, and even though AMD has moved much of its lineup to an even denser socket configuration, the Socket 940 interface lives on in MSI Computer's K8N Master2-FAR. A high-end workstation board able to take two dual-core Opteron 290 chips running at 2.8 GHz each, MSI claims the K8N is scalable all the way to 3.6 GHz.

MSI builds its K8N Master on NVIDIA's nForce4 Pro chipset, giving it a total of six memory slots able to accommodate 12GB of DDR memory. Two PCI Express x16 slots are perfect for SLI multi-card rendering. And a single PCI Express x4 connector should be ample for a high-end storage controller. Dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, SATA 3 Gbps, RAID support, and plenty of USB connectivity make MSI's K8N a solid foundation on which to build your next Opteron-based workstation.