The whole idea to build SafetyOrange was about to demonstrate the power and effectiveness of our virtual router platform. Finally the scope widened. I realized that there is no real alternative of S4 Mini regarding our job to have a standalone development and test environment if we want to avoid the serious overhead of centrally managed servers, cabling and resource allocation. Our company rents our notebooks, pays more than $100 for each 'managed workspace' a month!
We all could have an S4 Mini here instead.
- It has a small footprint, so no additional space in the office required, they can fit anywhere in the cubicles where there is a space for a notebook with docking station.
- The small footprint also helps to find them space even in a lab if we want to use them as servers (with multi-10G optical connections between them) it is only the additional heat needs to be taken care of.
- S4 Mini has nice ventilation and this is not a problem to keep them cool and quiet so they are fitting well into office space.
- With the dual slot support we can choose between NIC+NIC (server) config or NIC+GPU (workstation) builds.
- Because it is small we can move them easily around so creating any network or topology just for sake of an experiment would be really quick, too. Just two or three of us move to a meeting room for an hour with our Minis and connect them the way we want. No need for waiting anybody else.
- And finally they look awesome! Can you immagine e.g. a fleet of S4 Minis in an office space?
Yes, there are a few things to solve like their management and maintenance if needed. But I do not think this is a serious impediment. I had the demo today and the figures were pretty impressive. On top of it the audience loved the SafetyOrange.
Big big big thanks to
Josh | NFC for this awesome chassis!
