XENON in_FOURCE SHR
A very robust 4RU chassis was the casing of choice for the XENON and, boy, was this a machine to be reckoned with. It featured four Intel Xeon processors, 4GB RAM, an Adpatec 2100S with a five-drive array, and redundant power supplies. The whole front panel removes to expose the removable hotswap redundant power supply units; the machine we were supplied for testing had two power units installed and there is also even space for a third hot spare.
At the time of writing, XENON was awaiting the confirmation from Intel of this server's validation and by the time you read this it should be completed.
Internally, the layout and assembly of the system was very well executed. There is a clear plastic protective cover over the mainboard and also full length plastic protectors between each of the hotplug PCI-X slots, this certainly would aid in the reduction of inadvertent -shorts" that may be caused by a jittery engineer who has been assigned the task of having to replace a faulty card in a live server . . . talk about picking the short straw.
The Intel mainboard is a SRSH4 unit and supports four hotplug PCI-X cards. There are also a further two PCI-X slots available that are not hot-swappable, as well as two standard PCI slots. Next to all these expansion bays lives the removable memory card that can take up to 12 memory modules. The four CPUs are then housed just next to this under a bright blue airflow baffle which aids in their cooling/heat dissipation. Between all this equipment and the front of the chassis are six large hot swap fans, which also no doubt assist with the heat management when racked up in an enclosed space.
This server was shipped to us with Windows Enterprise Server 2003 pre-installed. It also shipped with a nifty 250GB Maxtor external USB drive unit which allows snapshots and backups to be made of the data on the fly. This is a neat insurance policy for paranoid administrators out there who are concerned that their users may inadvertently hit the wrong key and delete half the database.
Overall the XENON server, while certainly not the cheapest solution in this review, is still a very powerful, redundant, and robust server. It's certainly worthy of further investigation and evaluation by potential customers.
| Product | XENON in_FOURCE SHR |
| Price | $47,950 |
| Vendor | XENON |
| Phone | 03 9549 1111 |
| Web | www.xenon.com.au |
| Interoperability |  ½ |
| Runs a wide variety of operating systems. | |
| Futureproofing |  |
| A 4U chassis with a fair amount of room for drive and card expansion. | |
| ROI |  |
| If you’re seeking flat-out performance, this is a very good deal. | |
| Service |  |
| Two-year onsite warranty with four-hour response. | |
| Rating |  |
Hallmark, Xenon? Why include these two almost unknown brands, yet exclude IBM who is one of the largest x86 server manufacturers?