Friday, February 22, 2008

Maguay, Intel's Regional Partner, Launches the ExpertBlade Server - At the Hilton Athenee Palace in Bucharest

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In the SMB (small and medium-sized businesses) sector the IT factor is increasingly important, as companies need a reliable and resourceful IT department. Furthermore, the demand for higher data storage and faster connection speeds is forcing companies worldwide to take in consideration a serious budget raise for the IT administration.

One of the issues of the SMBs companies surfaces when they need to acquire or just upgrade their data storage servers, as the entire operation will probably translate into server downtime, which for most companies is not acceptable. The ongoing worldwide acceptance is the use of highly scalable blade servers and virtualization of data storage.

Maguay ExpertBlade server

Demo of the Maguay ExpertBlade server

Maguay, a Romanian system developer, has unveiled today at Hilton Athenee Palace in Bucharest the ExpertBlade. The two spokesmen of the event were Eduard Pughin, Operations Manager for Maguay Romania and Frantisek Fait, Channel Business Development Manager, Intel Corporation.

ExpertBlade is part of Maguay's lineup of server solutions and is built using Intel's Multi-Flex technology. The module server is developed to offer high scalability and an easy-to-use management interface to decrease the time needed in order to upgrade and deal with the technical issues of a data center.

"Intel Multi-Flex is an innovative technology that offers system builders a variety of functional blocks, that, in the end, the SMBs will benefit from," declared Frantisek Fait. "We are thrilled to work with Maguay in order to offer the Romanian clients our newest solution, shortly after its international release," he added.

Frantisek Fait, Channel Business Development Manager, Intel Corporation

Maguay ExpertBlade server

The server comes with a 6U rack-mount form factor able to be empowered with up to 6 blade servers, 14 2.5" SAS drives, a total of two Ethernet switch modules and up to 4 redundant power supply modules. What the Multi-Flex technology offers is a highly important scalability for data storage, which regular blade servers placed inside a mid-sized rack are unable to offer.

The noise level of an ExpertBlade working on two blade servers, three SAS 3Gb/s hard drives with two 1000W Intel Modular Server power supply is decent enough, compared to the overall noise level inside most data centers. The installation of the ExpertBlade is said to take 15 minutes at most, while traditional servers can reach up to 1 hour, including the physical and software management.

Regarding the software management of the ExpertBlade, the servers can be set up remotely using a web-based interface, which can offer the IT administrator the ability to check up the system stats with only with a few mouse clicks. The ExpertBlade comes with full technical support and warranty, which is covered by Maguay's own technical staff.

Journalists discussing with Eduard Pughin

Demo of the Maguay ExpertBlade server

The starting price for the ExpertBlade is estimated at 5000 Euro, for which the users will get an ExpertBlade with the following configuration:
2 x Intel Compute Module MFS5000SI
1 x Intel Xeon E5345 processor with 2.33 GHz
3 x Seagate Savvio 10K.2 SAS 3Gb/s 73-GB Hard Drive
1 x Gigabit Ethernet Switch
2 x Intel Modular Server Power Supply
Embedded Web based management interface

Maguay was established in 1997 and since then has been a developer of personal systems, servers and graphic stations using Intel technology. In 2007 the company has recorded a turnover of 8.5 million euro, and for 2008 they intend to achieve a revenue rate of 11 million Euro. The company is one of Intel's Premium Chanel Partners and Microsoft's Gold Certified Partners.

iPhoneDrive Is Now MegaPhone (1.5.1). Adds Notes - Also, items can now be dragged into Files and Notes sections

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MegaPhone 1.5.1 is the latest update to what iPhone owners used to refer to as iPhoneDrive. Ecamm Network has just released the updated and rebranded version of the company's software as a free update for registered users, as well as a purchasable $19.95 for iPhone/iPod touch users wanting to pick up on it just now.

What MegaPhone basically allows Mac OS X users to do is access
iTunes media, photos and even notes, as well as other data stored on one's iPhone or iPod touch. This release allows you to add notes and edit them too, aside using text, PDF and other format files, while all files and folders can be copied to both the iPhone and the iPod touch. This enables users to easily store or transfer data between Macs.

MegaPhone 1.5.1 sports a Mac OS X interface for a familiar look that makes it easy to transfer files between your Mac and your iPhone. If you have a couple of free gigs on your portable Apple device, you could use that as a disk drive to backup data or transfer between Macs. However, as some of you may have hinted already, files stored on the iPhone using MegaPhone cannot be viewed on the iPhone screen, as you would on your Mac.

Accessing and editing notes is also quick and simple, since all you need to do is connect your iPhone and view your existing notes, or drag new notes right onto your iPhone or iPod Touch. MegaPhone 1.5.1 also allows to export SMS messages and recent calls and can perform a recovery of your important files, should your Mac experience disk crash, or worse.

Requirements say that you need to own an iPhone or iPod Touch (you never know, some may try and use this on their Nintendo DS), iTunes v7.3 or later and of course USB 2.0. What you can download as a free, 7-day trial today is actually a limited demo, allowing access to just a few features, such as music, photo, SMS, call history and notes.