Hardware

Figure 1: Front and rear views of the 2440i

Over the past several weeks, I've had the opportunity to run the SonicWALL CDP 2440i on my network. Physically, it is a mini PC at 10.75” wide, 11.5” deep, and 2.5” high; see Figure 1. It has a CPU fan plus two chassis cooling fans that aren't too loud, but you won't want it on your desk, either. 

You'll recognize the internal components as similar to those in a PC; see Figure 2 below. The system runs on a VIA motherboard with a CLE266 chipset and a low power, low heat x86 1Ghz VIA Nehemiah CPU. Also inside is a 512MB stick of Kingston DDR333 RAM, an integrated 10/100 Ethernet NIC, and an Enterprise class 250GB PATA Western Digital Hard Drive (WD2500SB).

Figure 2: The motherboard of the 2440i

The back of the device has all the physical interfaces of a typical PC, including PS/2, VGA, USB, and even audio ports. The manual indicates that connecting to them can void the warranty, so I saved you the risk and tried it. Booting the CDP with a keyboard, mouse and monitor does enable you to see the BIOS graphic, telling you the system is built on a VIA VPSD board, as well as letting you watch the OS boot.

SonicWALL has secured both the BIOS and OS from end user access, so that is all you can see. Thus, there's no reason for a keyboard, mouse, and monitor, or a KVM for that matter. From watching the OS boot, I can tell you the system is running a Debian based Linux OS. Once booted, there's nothing you can do with the physical I/O connections; you're left at the simple screen in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Boot screen for the CDP

Tags: NAS, Sonicwall,

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