Kontron has announced the availability of the KISS 4U Short Q67Flex, the latest addition to the Kontron Industrial Silent Server (KISS) family in the 4U short 19" rack format. The industrial rackmount server boasts long-term availability as well as outstanding speed and graphics performance with the 2nd generation Intel® Core™ i3/i5/i7 processors. Compared to its predecessors, this 4U industrial rackmount server offers improved features which deliver a new level of robustness and more convenience. The server's scope of application is extended into demanding areas such as in-vehicle systems in the transportation segment or military applications.

In addition to the high processor and graphics performance, other new features of the optimized server design are a temperature range of 0 to 55 °C (60 °C at 10% POH per month), improved shock and vibration resistance as well as hot-swappable chassis fans, which are positioned at the front of the system to make swapping more convenient and thus reduce maintenance effort. Not only is the standard version with IP20 protection available but a version with IP52 which protects against dust and dripping water penetration. The power supplies are also now equipped for higher performance and compliant with the 80 PLUS® standard, which certifies improved energy efficiency. Furthermore the main supply has been extended to cater for industrial voltage ranges and optionally supports 24 or 48 VDC.

Thanks to the integrated Intel® HD® graphics with DirectX10.1 and OpenGL 3.0 support, the Kontron industrial rackmount server KISS 4U Short Q67Flex delivers 2D and 3D graphic performance on the same level as dedicated graphic cards. Even multi-screen applications, which require the simultaneous display of two different HD video streams, or innovative 3D applications, are possible without the need for additional components. With 2 x DisplayPort, 1 x VGA and optional LVDS, the new Kontron KISS 4U Short Q67Flex boasts all industry-relevant monitor standards natively or with low-cost adapters for DVI or HDMI. The robust and low-maintenance industrial rackmount server is ideally suited for demanding applications such as industrial automation and process control in transportation or building automation. With a noise level of just 35 dBA, the industrial rackmount server is ideal for noise sensitive environments such as control rooms, A/V equipment rooms or CAD/QS/surveillance systems. With the integrated Intel® Turbo Boost Technology 2.0 and Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions (Intel® AVX) applications also benefit from faster floating point operations and vectorial calculations at a lower rate of energy consumption which also make the Kontron KISS 4U Short Q67Flex a fit for imaging processing in medical, radar and sonar systems.

The feature set in detail
The new Kontron industrial rackmount server KISS 4U Short Q67Flex with its 25% reduced construction depth ('short': 300mm) is based on the 2nd generation Intel® Core™ i3/i5/i7 processors with up to 3.8 GHz and offers - in connection with the Intel® Q67 Controller Hub and a maximum of 32 GB DDR3 RAM - an exceedingly wide performance range. One PCI Express Gen 2 x16 for graphic and framegrabber cards as well as 1x PCI Express Gen 2 x4 and 2x PCI 32 Bit extension slots enable customer-specific system designs with standards-based extension slots. The Kontron KISS 4U Short Q67Flex also comes with an impressive selection of industrial-purpose options for peripherals or networking via 8x USB 2.0 (6x rear, 2x front), 3x GbE-LAN and 2x RS232. Service issues have been simplified thanks to the inclusion of Intel® AMT 7.0 support and this increases the system availability of the Kontron KISS 4U Short Q67Flex while lowering overall costs. For data storage there is a shock resistant internal 3.5" drive bay, two 5.25" drive bays and a slim DVD drive at the front. SATA 6Gb/s support enables extremely fast access to the hard disk and for even better data security, optional RAID subsystems (Kontron KISS Stor 1 and KISS Stor 0/5) in hot-swappable hard disk cases are available. Facilitating flexible scalable data storage, new hard disk carriers have become available, like for example for 3x 3.5" hard disks (Kontron KISS DA 335) or 4x 2.5" hard disks (KISS DA 425), which are connected via a power and a SATA cable and are easy to install and service.

With a MTBF of 50,000 hours, Kontron's latest industrial rackmount server guarantees a high level of availability while at the same time keeping maintenance costs low. The Kontron industrial rackmount server KISS 4U Short Q67Flex is CE certified and designed to meet UL. It supports both Linux and Windows operating systems and is now in stock and available as a standard system. Alternatively the systems can be configured to meet customer-specific needs and then shipped after testing and certification as a complete system.