BB-ITX96 Blade Computing System for Mini-ITX

 
6U - 9 blades, standard Mini-ITX motherboards, DC or AC power

The BB-ITX96 Blades system is designed around industry standard Mini-ITX architecture, and utilizes non proprietary off the shelf parts. It can be ordered as a build it yourself blade system where you provide the parts, or as a fully configured ready- to-run system built to your specifications. We offer a wide variety of motherboard, processor, and storage options.

Flexibility - blade tray supports up to six 2.5" disk drives with stacking

Features at a glance

• Fully configurable blade server system supporting all industry standard Mini-ITX motherboards
• Configuration for identical blades or a mixture of technology to meet application requirements
• Supports up to six 2.5" disk drives per blade tray (3 standard, 6 with optional stacking rails) for RAID
• Open frame blade tray design ensures unrestricted air flow and ease of service
• Eight 56.8 CFM hydro-wave cooling fans, for total front to back airflow of 454.4 CFM
• Support for CPU total power dissipation from under 20 watts to 95 watts per tray
• Standard switches and LED's for power, reset, power good, and disk activity work with any motherboard
• Built in fan failure and over-temperature alarm alerts you visually, audibly, with mute button
• 12 Volts DC or 240/120Volts AC operation for fixed or mobile/remote deployments
• Unique power system design keeps power supply heat away from critical components
• Modular power supply system enables fast and easy replacement
• Built in wiring harness system enables secure and stable blade tray wiring
• Each tray is easily removable from the front with a single thumbscrew
• Locking front panel to prevent tampering or accidental interference
• Designed to be reconfigurable and reusable, upgradeable for long term ROI
• Rugged design using 16 gauge powder coated steel throughout, RoHS compliant
• Removable permanent dust filter in front door fan panel, washable

 

Broad applications - The BAB-ITX96 is suitable for use in most any application requiring servers, graphic renderer farms, remote KVM operated workstations, small business web and communications servers, or specialized process control systems that use PC based solutions. Anywhere you need high computing density, low power, and ease of servicing, this system can be configured to meet not only those, but most any need often filled by much more expensive and proprietary blade server systems.

As seen at left, blades can easily be removed from the chassis with one thumbscrew, sliding out the front of the chassis, with no interruption of service to other blades in operation.

Build-a-Blade systems are easy to configure, easy to manage, and provide an exceptional return on your investment due to their low power nature, and their ability to be re-used when technology advances and you need additional processing power.

Great ROI ! - When you need a new washer/dryer at home, do you sell your house? Of course not! Build-a-Blade is based on the same concept, you simply upgrade the "appliances" (the blade trays) inside the house (the chassis) making for an exceptional Return On Investment that can span many years of service.

Support for RAID based blades - You can place up to six 2.5" hard disks or solid state drives on a BAB-ITX96 blade tray. At left, see a tray with four drives, 3 on the base plus one added with stacking rails.

Supports a wide variety of processors and motherboards -  Systems can be configured to be low power Atom based processors, such as the D525 dual core CPU with passive cooling at 1.8Ghz all the way up to Core i7 processors and Xeon processors requiring active cooling solutions. Our high volume front-to-rear air flow system supports motherboards up to 120 watts of power dissipation when combined with a low profile active CPU heatsink. See our list of supported motherboard and processor combinations for the BB-ITX96.

Easy remote management - Just like any blade server system, remote management solutions of all kinds are supported, based on the hardware you choose.  These include hardware KVM switches, VNC, Windows remote desktop, and Intel IPMI, AMT, Remote Management Modules and others.

A unique power supply solution, so unique, we've applied for a patent - One of the biggest heat generators in computer chassis is power supplies, and they are also often the most vulnerable and difficult to replace components. Some proprietary solutions for existing blade systems use redundant power supplies driving a common power buss for all blades. While this can be effective, it is also expensive, and you are forced to purchase proprietary spare power supplies typically available from only one manufacturer.

In keeping with our non-proprietary industry standard components concept, our unique solution is to use multiple off the shelf AC to DC power bricks, much like laptop power supplies, and mount them on a rear rack-mounted tray as seen at left and  in the in-use installed photo at right. See our FAQs and the points below on why this design has many advantages.

 

This power delivery design solves several problems and makes service very easy:

• It gets the power supply heat out of the chassis - improving performance and reducing stress
• It allows for redundancy - no single power supply failure will take down all blades
• A wide variety of vendors supply these, you aren't locked to a single source
• It makes service very easy - if a supply fails, you simply unplug the cable, plug in a new supply, and you are running
• It improves efficiency - these switching power supply bricks have a high conversion efficiency
• It eliminates power supply fans - these supplies are designed to be open air cooled - no worries about dust filters or replacement fans specific to power supplies
• It allows for AC or DC operation - without the AC/DC power bricks, and you have a 12 volt DC ready system for remote/mobile deployment applications

Fully scalable: start small, grow big - you can start small with a chassis and one blade, and add additional blades as needed. We sell starter kits you can populate yourself with your own components as well as fully configured turn-key ready to run systems. See our list of supported Mini-ITX motherboards here

Click images to enlarge 

 

See Our Store to choose a solution right for you. If you need higher density, consider our BB-ITX84, using the Thin Mini-ITX standard, with 8 blades in a 4U rack space.

For specifications, manuals, and other details, see our Spec-sheets and manuals page

Have configuration questions? Need a quote? Contact support