May 2007 — News

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Review: Google Mini 2.2

by Dave Nagel

"Deploy and forget." That's the phrase that comes to mind to describe the Google Mini, the 1U rackmount appliance from Google. Now at version 2.2, the Google Mini provides key intranet and Internet search functionality, coupled with Google Analytics and document security integration, that make it, essentially, a complete "Google in a box," tailored just for you. And it's so simple and worry-free to operate and maintain that you might just forget you ever deployed it in the first place.

Google Mini 2.2 is the latest upgrade to the second-generation Google Mini, which launched 13 months ago--about half the size of the original with a drastically reduced cost of entry, but packing more power and features than the first-generation appliance. Dozens of universities, colleges, schools, and other educational organizations have already deployed this appliance in that short time and are using it for both Internet and intranet applications.

Version 2.2, released in late January, adds even more features to this intranet/Internet search appliance, including secure searching, search improvements, and other features. For those who have already deployed the Google Mini 2.0, the upgrade to 2.2 is free. (See more on the upgrade process below.)

The Google Mini is available in four configurations ranging in price from $1,995 to $8,995, depending on capacity. (See end of article for configurations.)

Setup
The first thing I mentioned about the Google Mini was its ease of deployment. It really couldn't be simpler. I set up my Google Mini using nothing more than a Mac laptop. (That ought to tell you something.)

Google supplies two color-coded data cables with the Mini--one Ethernet cable for connecting to your network, one crossover cable for a direct connection to the Google box. To set the unit up, you connect the crossover cable to your laptop or desktop, then run through a simple browser-based wizard, which allows you to assign IP addresses, ports, network time servers, sites to be indexed, et cetera. There's nothing involved in the process that isn't self-explanatory. And there are numerous links to documentation throughout the set-up process, as well as a complete walkthrough in the printed manual, should you encounter any difficulties along the way.


I had never used a Google Mini prior to this one, and I had it up and running in about 20 minutes (plus the initial warm-up time).

Software features
At the heart of the Google Mini--at least as far as end users are concerned--is Google's robust search functionality. The Mini can crawl both public websites (for use as a search engine for your campus' website) and file systems (for intranet use). Like the real-life Google service, documents crawled by the Google Mini (including non-HTML documents, such as PDFs) can be cached so that they're viewable even when the original document goes offline. The Mini also supports Word, Excel, PostScript, PowerPoint, and rich text documents--more than 200 file types in total.