(Credit: Lenovo)
Lenovo ThinkServer RS110
While server racks may conjure images of
extensive server farms and Cray computers, even small offices can
benefit from setting up a small rack. A small server or two, a
modem and router that can be kept tidily out of the way, and plenty of
room kept for a UPS.
It looks much more professional and is far easier to maintain than that rats' nest under your desk. A small rack server can be quite modestly priced and, when installed, more compact than a server in the tower configuration.
Lenovo is the company that took over production of IBM's ThinkPad and ThinkCentre range. They also produce a number of ThinkServers. The ThinkServer RS models are designed to be rack-mounted while TS models have the tower form-factor. This review looks at the RS110, a small 1RU device.
First impressions are always important, which is why installation instructions need to be accurate. This machine was supplied to the TestLab without an operating system or RAID configured, so some work was required before we could begin benchmarking (Lenovo can, however, supply customers with Windows Server or Suse Linux pre-installed).
The RS110 is a single RU device with a depth of only 55cm. Under the bonnet is space for a single CPU — in this case a quad-core Intel Xeon X3360 processor running at 2.83GHz. This is supported by the Intel 3210 chipset and a massive heat exchanger backed by three small fans (which also cool the RAM). There are four additional fans, two drawing air across the power supply and two cooling the hard drives and RAID card. Four memory slots are available; two were filled for a total of 4MB RAM, but up to 8GB is supported.
Graphics is controlled by an ATI ES1000 chip designed with remote management and KVM over IP applications in mind. Up to four 2.5-inch hard drives, or two 3.5-inch drives can be installed. As supplied to Enex TestLab, the machine had a single 146GB 2.5-inch 10K RPM SAS drive. The RAID controller filled one of two available PCI-E x8 card slots. It is also worth noting that the empty slot will only accept low profile cards.
The engineering of this machine is good, but not exceptional. Some of the niceties of high-end servers are missing. Since fans and the power supply are not hot swappable, there is little need for simple clip-in clip-out cradles. Things are neatly laid out inside, but being compact, this can make cabling appear more cluttered (sadly, smaller machines don't need less cabling).
The modest array of ports include two USB ports at the front and four more at the rear. Also at the rear are twin gigabit Ethernet ports, a management port, VGA, and a COM port.
| Benchmark | Test | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Cinebench | 1 CPU render | 43 seconds |
| X CPU render | 13 seconds | |
| Sungard | 496 seconds |
Contents
Verdict
The benchmark results shown in the table are nothing
special when compared to the similarly priced Asus TS500 tower
server (tested in October last year). The Sungard score is
particularly disappointing compared to the Asus machine, which
completed the benchmark in 306 seconds rather than the Lenovo
RS110's 496 seconds.
Its peak and idle power consumption measured at 162.4W and 96.6W respectively, giving an average power usage of 122.9W. This is a pleasantly low figure, but it would suffer if one took advantage of the RAID card and added another drive or two. Extra 146G SAS drives like the one provided are priced at around $508 (although you could just as easily buy four SATA drives for the same price as one SAS device and wear the slight reduction in reliability). It is hard to see how the pricing of SAS drives is justified. Overall, the price of this machine is comparable to similar offerings from Dell.
The ThinkServer is provided with a basic three-year warranty with a variety of service options available. Even the base warranty includes 90 days with priority support, which includes next business day on-site service and 24/7 phone support. Options for on-site training and installation are also available. The RS110 is reasonably priced and has good performance and engineering, and very good energy consumption figures.
| The bottom line | An economical, reasonably powerful, low-end server for a small office environment. |
|---|---|
| Vendor | Lenovo |
| Price | $4026 as supplied |
| Warranty/support | Three years warranty, 90 days priority support (including next-business-day on-site service), 24/7 phone support |
| The good | Low energy consumption |
| Well priced | |
| Good warranty/service options | |
| The bad | Incorrect instructions given for access to RAID configuration |
| At least one extra hard drive required for good data security | |
| SAS drives are very expensive |
Enex TestLab is one of Australia's most experienced, independent technology test facilities. After more than 16 years with RMIT IT TestLab, Enex's founders acquired the business from RMIT in 2005.
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.