Product of the Day: APPRO 1124 Servers

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Product of the Day: APPRO 1124 Servers

Product: APPRO 1124 ServersManufacturer: APPROAddress: 446 South Abbott Avenue               Milpitas, California 95035Telephone: 800-927-5464URL: www.appro.com

Tippett Studio Selected Appro 1124 Servers Powered by AMD

Tippett Studio is an Academy Award winning full service visual effects facility that specializes that specializes in CG character animation for movies and television commercials. As the director of technology, I work with a talented group of technicians and software developers to manage a large network of hardware, software and varied operating systems. We strive to enable Tippett Studio and its artists to deliver amazing images for motion picture and television screens.

We run Linux on our render farm so we need to research how well the actual hardware is supported at the chip level. Appro was a perfect match-we already had some experience with AMD technology and, with a testing system provided by Appro, we were able to test the hardware configuration to get exactly what we wanted. In addition, cost and high performance factored heavily in selecting the Appro AMD solution.

Our first purchase was for twenty-five Appro 1124i Dual AMD Athlon MP Processor servers. They arrived completely functional. This may be an obvious expectation but, in my experience, this is a first from any vendor. All servers sprang to life from the start. About one month later, one disk drive failed and Appro immediately shipped a replacement. Refreshing. Our satisfaction led us to order another twenty-five servers.

The economics of growing our render farm is no longer a "once every few years" event. We can add machines anytime we want, with very short turnarounds. Previously, it would take months to take delivery of machines--now it takes a couple weeks, max. The reliability of the Appro 1124i has been great-the servers have been running non-stop since May. Perhaps PG&E could bring them down, but not much else. These are powerful, scalable and stable units. I especially like the full serial console capabilities, from POST to multi-user mode, which greatly simplifies management and troubleshooting in a machine room environment.

This year we've quadrupled our potential rendered frame output at a fraction of previous costs, thanks to Appro! I recommend Appro International for their engineering design, built-in functionality, raw horsepower and customer focus."

Christian RiceDirector of TechnologyTippett Studioswww.tippett.com

email: potd@ssc.com

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