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SPHERE SERVERS LAUNCH “ROCKETSPHERE”
Added: (Tue Nov 01 2005)
Launched last week at London’s MacExpo (Olympia 27-29th October), RocketSphere is probably the world’s funkiest small office server solution! Joining more conventionally styled hardware (SphereXPC and RackSphere),
the new RocketSphere provides a choice of three platforms for small businesses to choose to run our “server appliance” Sphere for Offices software package.
RocketSphere + Sphere for Offices provides everything that a group of people need to get up and running quickly and efficiently with email (and fully synchronised webmail), file sharing (Windows, Mac and Linux), website(s) (with database back-ends if required), firewall, spam filtering, anti-virus, DHCP server, DNS proxy, remote access, FTP server, WebDAV public share and many other features. RocketSphere has 2 gigabit ethernet ports. Connect one to a broadband connection and the other to your network switch for example, and your systems are go! With built-in wireless networking, firewire and USB, expansion is simple. But RocketSphere offers twin RAID mirrored at least 200Gb SATA disk drives as standard, up to 2Gb of DDR2 RAM, all powered by a 3GHz Pentium4 630 running a linux 2.6.13 kernel with ReiserFS journalled file systems etc.
Sphere Servers acknowledge that Cobalt pioneered the “server appliance” with their innovative Qube product. Sphere was developed to provide a modern equivalent by a team who used to sell Cobalt. But we’ve brought the whole thing up-to-date, adding many more features required by a small network today, and taken the idea of web management beyond the administrator: Sphere introduces the concept of a superuser account used to manage overall settings, and also gives every user direct web access to common requirements such as webmail, mail identities, file-shares, disk space, personal backup and restore, password change, quarantine (for spam and virii) etc. etc. Sphere assumes minimal technical knowledge and can be supported remotely 24/7 through optional support plans.
While the RocketSphere hardware is brand new, our software has been proven in mission critical roles at the heart of busy and demanding film and commercials production companies etc. in London’s Soho where some systems have been running for up to two years now. We understand the real issues and we’ve addressed them with this solution. Developing robust file sharing which preserves Apple “resource forks” for example!
RocketSphere is perhaps outrageously styled, but is intended for environments where there is no need for a cupboard full of humming spaghetti. It runs virtually silently and with its wireless antenna, it demands to be located centrally in a public area! As of last week, RocketSpheres are now being ordered, and will ship from January 2006. There’s never been another server quite like this...