Remember the thin-client/fat-client debate of a few years ago? Do you recall the underwhelming appearance of devices such as Net PCs, network PCs and diskless workstations? Those machines often cost more than PCs while delivering less capability, and they generally bombed in the marketplace.
Much of the impetus for the thin-client model was its promise to solve one of the persistent headaches IT and help desk staffers face: having to travel to a user's office or desk to troubleshoot a PC problem.
Plenty of vendors have tried to resolve this by offering a variety of remote-management software products, but the tools really only work when there's a software problem. To repair, replace or upgrade a physical component, you still need to trek out to the user.
A small company in Austin, Texas, looked at this problem differently and came up with an innovative solution.
ClearCube Technology Inc. created its C3 architecture, which comprises an entire Wintel PC on a single card (called a CPU Blade) that's designed to fit on edge into a 5.25-in. high rack-mountable enclosure (called the Cage) that holds eight Blades. A typical 6-ft. by 19-in. rack can hold a dozen such Cages for a total of 96 PCs.
LEDs on the front panel indicate power and hard-drive status for each PC, while a Category 5 Ethernet cable on the back panel goes out to the user's desk, connecting to a small black box (called the C/Port) that contains connectors for the user's monitor, keyboard, mouse and serial port. The serial port is handy for personal digital assistants. Another C/Port model primarily uses Universal Serial Bus (USB) connectors.
ClearCube has several patents in the area of data transfer over copper wire, and its technologies allow all the needed signals, including video and USB, to be extended as far as 200 meters from the Blade. Each user still has a dedicated CPU, RAM, network interface card, hard drive or drives, and graphics board on his Blade.
One of the interesting consequences of ClearCube's architecture is that it really does turn your network inside out. A typical corporate LAN has a bunch of servers in a controlled environment that connect to the outside world on one side and to all the corporate users on the other side. Long cables carry network traffic to and from the servers.
ClearCube's design, however, puts the PCs in the same room as the servers. To hook them up to the LAN, all that's needed is a short cable for each PC. The long cable that used to be the user's network connection is now the bridge between the user's desk and his PC. Clever engineering allows an analog video signal to be carried over three of the cable's four twisted wire pairs, while all other I/O travels through the fourth pair.
Why centralize?
Although it seems strange at first, this arrangement has several advantages. It keeps PCs physically accessible to IT staffers at all times and gives IT the ability to back up user PCs. The Blades have jumpers on them that allow IT staff to disable some components or capabilities, such as the use of removable storage devices at a user's location, to prevent him from installing unauthorized software or removing proprietary data, for example.
When the user doesn't need a computer tower nearby, he may be able to get by with a smaller workspace. This can be especially important in densely populated call centers, customer service centers and support operations, as it also removes the heat and fan noise of PCs from those environments. Not having the computer handy also means components inside the box can't go home with a dishonest employee.
Finally, what happens when a user's PC crashes or suffers a hardware failure? With ClearCube's architecture, as long as data is stored on a network server, an administrator can quickly switch that user to a spare Blade without having to directly touch either the failed or spare PCs.
The ClearCube approach to PCs will be slightly more expensive than installing standard PCs. The Blades are reasonably priced, compared with the cost of standard PCs, but IT will also have to buy Cages, racks and C/Ports. Still, the improved security, reliability, and ability to swap in spare PCs should together reduce the total cost of ownership. For more information, visit www.clearcube.com.
