Contents
Introduction
Any decent mid-range server will be highly
expandable. This means lots of empty memory and PCIe slots, some
empty drive bays and hopefully room for another processor. The
golden rule here is: be prepared to expand, but don't assume you
will.
There is no need to buy something that is beyond your current needs. Computer equipment depreciates far too quickly. The flexible design of many of today's servers is the real difference between machines. It's as much about the optional expansion as it is about the machine's ultimate performance on the day it arrives.
How we tested
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise R2 is
pre-installed in preparation for benchmarking. Test software used is
Cinebench 9.5 and Intel Sungard 2.5; these tests assess raw
processor power and are able to take advantage of multiple CPU
cores and threads.
Power consumption is also measured. The machine is assessed for build quality and feature set. Redundant systems, the ability to hot swap parts and general ease of maintenance are also looked for. Expansion options for drives, cards, RAM and processors are critical.
SAS or SATA?
One thing you might note about all the servers currently being
tested is that they all use SAS hard drives. SAS drives have higher rotational speeds than SATA drives, which is supposed to
translate into better data transfer speeds, but in practice the
improvement is not as stunning as one might expect. SAS drives also
demonstrate better error checking and reporting.
However, the question for an administrator must be: is it better to have slightly improved performance and reliability, or is it better to buy three or four SATA drives for the same price as one SAS device?
A bank of SATA drives configured to RAID 60 should provide great reliability and cost about the same as twin SAS drives in RAID 1 or RAID 0. SATA drives can also have much higher capacities than current SAS drives. Obviously a bank of SATA drives takes more energy than one or two SAS drives, but it also has a correspondingly higher data capacity. SAS may be better, but it is hard to comprehend the extraordinary prices they command. Market forces clearly still count for much more than technological advancement.
Michael Palamountain is employed by Enex TestLab, an independent global testing organisation, founded in 1989 and is based at RMIT University in Melbourne Australia. Enex comprises eight business divisions each focused on different verticals all revolving around independent testing and expert consultancy from software and systems testing through to usability and gaming. The TestLab has been creating content for ZDNet and its affiliates for over 17 years.
Great article, a few little things i think that would be worth mentioning tho.
Remote access, I work for a large IT Solutions Provider and one of our big cosiderations even for smaller clients is the ability for remote access Dell has DRAC HP has iLO etc. and the differences here are amazing. From experience IBM being worst then dell with HP at the top with their new iLO2.
The other thing that is a selling point of some of these servers is noise (remember we are talking mid market so alot run these in offices) and driver support, ie how hard it is to find drivers for the components and more importantly a fresh install of Windows will the generic drives work enough to get to the website to download them? The DL360 for instance won't install nic drivers with a raw install of win2k3, but if you install with the smart start cd all is well. I'm sure the others have similar features.
Interesting about the SATA Vs SAS tho, most of these servers have the ability to combo, ie 2xsas 3xsata which seems to be a good compromise as from experience the SATA drives especially in a exchange 07 (sbs08) environment seem to fail in extremity fast succession.
But overall good article.