Hallmark Duad-BR
The Hallmark was shipped to us in a pedestal chassis, but is also available as rackmount. The chassis itself is very robust with plenty of engineering obviously gone into it; this machine certainly could not be considered a beefed-up desktop PC, it is a true server through and through. There is one point of weakness however in that this server only has a single power supply. The mainboard also is only dual-Xeon capable where the other servers in this review are all quad. These factors however are offset by the large price difference between the other servers in this review.
The mainboard itself is a standard Intel manufactured unit (SE7501BR2) running in conjunction with an Adaptec RAID card (2100S). The utilities and diagnostics available on the bundled Adaptec boot disc are very impressive, in fact as part of our testing we re-formatted all the systems in this review, reconfigured their RAID arrays, and installed Windows 2000 Advanced Server to ensure each platform was tested running in similar configurations. This process was made very simple and straightforward with this Adaptec utility.
The rear of the unit has a large fan, two smaller ones and the power supply fan. With all these fans the machine still ran relatively quiet for a server. Each side of the machine had ventilation grilles machined into the casing towards the front.
The front of the machine has a plastic door that is lockable. There are five removable drive bays.
Internally the machine was neatly constructed, certainly no cables seemed to be interfering with other devices, however more attention could have been paid to the cable routing, and there seemed to be an excessive use of nylon cable ties, making it difficult for technicians to remove/replace or use spare power connectors out in the field should the need ever arise. It would be much better to see the reusable velcro cable ties used, particularly on cables that may need to be unplugged relatively frequently. As for devices interfering with each other, the rear of the HDD drive array seemed to come very close to the lower CPU's fan unit, virtually obstructing the CPU fan on the heatsink. This matter seems that it could have been better addressed by moving the drive array to the bottom of the 5.25in bays. There were four PCI-X slots in total, with only one used (Adaptec RAID card), and two standard PCI slots free. There were also two free memory slots available.
The machine was supplied pre-installed with Windows 2003 standard server and two CPUs installed.
Overall, the Hallmark Duad server is a entry-level dual Xeon server at a good price, but the lack of power supply redundancy is something to be concerned with unless the intended application is for server clustering which is definitely gaining popularity with the uptake of more Linux deployments and even Citrix server farms. The inclusion of the Adaptec RAID card and drive array as well are very good and certainly should ensure the data's safety. Note that this is not a valid excuse for failing to keep adequate regular data backups, of course.
| Product | Hallmark Duad BR |
| Price | $7698.90 |
| Vendor | Hallmark |
| Phone | 03 9540 8555 |
| Web | www.hallmark.com.au |
| Interoperability |  |
| Runs a wide variety of operating systems, but limited space for expansion cards. | |
| Futureproofing |  |
| Mainboard only supports two processors, not suitable if you need quad capability. | |
| ROI |  ½ |
| A good deal as long as you only need two processors; shows the difference in base price between dual and quad processor machines. | |
| Service |  |
| 3-year parts and labour warranty. | |
| Rating |  |
Hallmark, Xenon? Why include these two almost unknown brands, yet exclude IBM who is one of the largest x86 server manufacturers?