I didn’t know anyone was making a board like this. It is totally unique, better than any other small server board out there. C206 is the only chipset supporting AMT with the E3-12xx Xeons (“Sandy Bridge”; AMT only on models with on-chip integrated video 12x5/1260L). These new Xeons are the only line with a genuinely low-power server chip (remote management, ECC, high quality storage chips, multiple LAN, etc). There are two small C206 boards, and the other one made by Intel has poor connectivity. So, this is the only mITX Xeon board capable of hosting several drives, one of three boards of any size which can support AMT with Sandy Bridge Xeon, and one is full ATX with a load of junk on board. A step up in size at mATX has no C206 boards at all, but why would you want to? PCIe for a JBOD card if you want it or quad GBe should be enough. What’s missing is frippery, which is why this chap is perfect. Unique, and unavailable. Some guys in a forum did a group buy just last week and ordered a small production run between them, and if I’d known about this just a couple of weeks earlier, I’d have done it. Shame. If I can’t get one, I’ll probably have to wait for Panther Point and Ivy Bridge, at the end of the year. Atom with ECC and server spec has been delayed to 2012. The only machine I would consider meeting all my requirements is still unbuyable, and we should be demanding all the things we aren’t getting from our current setups.
UPDATE: It turns out that this thing will be available at the end of the month. A unique, awesome board costing £250. Bear in mind also that it only takes expensive CPUs (the 1260L or the 12x5 workstation ones), and expensive RAM. Is AMT, 6 HDD without using up a PCI slot, and mITX a combination really worth £200 extra? Not convinced. The $220 price though is very appealing. Next stop would be Intel S1200KP, if those were available.