ORLANDO, Fla., 30 Nov. 2012. Engineers from a multinational joint venture building the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) needed rugged servers and workstations to enhance MEADS computer power. They found their solution from Z Microsystems in San Diego.

Z Microsystems is providing the company's commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) ZX series rugged workstations and servers in support MEADS, which the company toughened against the effects of shock, vibration, and other extreme operating environments to meet MEADS specs.

MEADS is a mobile air defense system designed to replace Patriot systems in the U.S. and Germany and Nike Hercules systems in Italy. Developing the system are missile experts at MBDA in Germany and Italy, and Lockheed Martin in the U.S. Together these companies comprise MEADS International Inc., which is based in Orlando, Fla.

The ZX series rugged servers and workstations are designed to meet MIL-STD-810G for shock, vibration, humidity, and temperature extremes. Enhanced military options such as EMI filtered power supplies with military circular connectors and locking security panel are available.

The ZX series of rugged rackmount servers from Z Microsystems come in 1U, 2U, and 3U sizes, and are designed form mission-critical military applications on aircraft, ships, and ground vehicles. Five fans provide thermal management, and a sensor network monitors temperature around the chassis and controls the fans to provide adaptive airflow. The rugged servers are designed for Intel and AMD microprocessors. The ZX-3 can accommodate as many as 12 disk drives configured as a RAID subsystem. The server also has dual-redundant hot-swappable 650-Watt power supplies and PCI Express graphics cards.

The ZX Series also complies with the European CE marking for safety and environmental standards. For more information contact Z Microsystems online at www.zmicro.com, or MEADS International at http://meads-amd.com.