(Credit: Dell)
Dell PowerEdge R710
At the time of writing, there happened to be three Dell R710s
residing at the Enex TestLab. With three different configurations
on each, it becomes abundantly clear how much performance can be
improved by upgrading CPUs or adding a little more RAM. Dell's website allows you to check prices for all its available
configurations, so it's really worthwhile researching this site.
Experiment with the different features your budget might allow for,
before doing a price check between vendors.
The Dell PowerEdge R710 is a 2RU machine with plenty of room to expand. Inside it has space for two full-size PCIe x4 and PCIe x8 cards (on top of the RAID card already present). The machine we tested had six 3.5-inch drive bays, but eight 2.5-inch bays are also possible. The inside of the box is really roomy and neat. Cables are kept under strict control, so that are quite unobtrusive. This degree of organisation is about much more than appearances. Messy cables can easily interfere with access to components during maintenance and also commonly interfere with airflow.
Airflow through the R710 is maintained by a bank of five fans stretching across the entire breadth of the unit, right behind the drive bays. Additionally, each of the two removable power supplies have a dedicated internal fan. The spacing of the main array of fans suggests that things could get nasty if the middle fan was to fail. With the middle fan gone, we'd be nervous that only a poor flow of air from the flanking fans would remain for all of the CPUs. Dell maintains this fan is used primarily for I/O hub cooling though, and is not the worst case fan fail for CPU; indeed, in case of worst case failure, it claims the server will meet "Thermal Profile A".
For this review, Dell provided the TestLab with a very well-endowed machine. It boasted dual-quad-core 2.93GHz X5570 CPUs, 24GB RAM and twin 73GB Seagate Savvio 15K RPM SAS hard drives. This is nearing the machine's CPU capacity, but there is plenty of room for expansion otherwise. The maximum RAM capacity for the 18 available slots is a massive 144GB (8GB per slot) and it can take up to six 3.5-inch terabyte hard drives. The impressive RAM and storage capacity makes this a great host for virtualisation scenarios such as supporting large numbers of thin clients.
A separate management port supplements the four gigabit Ethernet ports. Management software is based on reliable Symantec Management Platform technology (formerly by Altiris). The usual Dell LCD status display can be found on the front panel; connected to an internal SD card (which is actually used by an embedded hypervisor). The R710 can be supplied with hypervisors from Microsoft, VMware or Citrix as required. Integrated backup and recovery software can also be pre-installed.
As mentioned earlier, another lower spec R710 was also in the lab at the time and so we were eager to make some comparisons. This second machine only had twin 1.86GHz dual-core CPUs with 4GB RAM. This machine required only 60 per cent of the power used by the beefier machine; however, its performance was almost seven times slower for the Sungard benchmark and four times slower with Cinebench.
| Benchmark | Test | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Cinebench | 1 CPU render | 62 seconds |
| 16 CPU render | 9 seconds | |
| Sungard | 225 seconds |
Contents
Verdict
The PowerEdge R710 is a well engineered machine with reasonable power and plenty of upgrade potential. The Quad Core Intel L5520 Xeon(R) CPUs, 2.26GHz provide good performance. Faster CPUs are available making it suitable for virtualisation applications — a scenario greatly enhanced by embedded hypervisor technology.
Four gigabit Ethernet ports make this machine well suited to the
role of centrepiece in a busy office's LAN.
Dell has been focused on energy efficiency through its Energy Smart technology. Peak power usage is 269.7 Watts (W) while its idle power consumption is 171.1W. Combined, these provide a weighted average consumption figure of 210.5W. These are good figures for a machine of this calibre (although no match for IBM's x3650 M2).
This machine is really intended for so much more than what the tested configuration can manage. Achieving decent return on investment really relies on upgrading this unit from its baseline configuration.
Dell offers a variety of services including factory, remote and on-site installation. On-board management technology assists with error correction and reduces the need for human supervision. The price, $12,013.20 including GST, includes three years of "Prosupport for IT". This service includes next business day on-site servicing and delivery of parts as required by the severity of the problem.
| The bottom line | A well-crafted machine, with great potential and reasonable pricing if rapid upgrading is expected |
|---|---|
| Vendor | Dell |
| Price | $12,013.20 as supplied |
| Warranty/support | Three years of "Prosupport for IT": includes next business day on-site servicing and delivery of parts |
| The good | Great processing power and plenty of RAM |
| Excellent upgrade potential | |
| Modest energy usage | |
| The bad | Airflow past CPUs may reduce drastically in event of centre fan failing |
| SAS drives are very expensive |
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.