Evolution Rackservers.com

Latest Awards and Reviews


		May 2007

Review : No prizes for guessing what this company specialises in and for this group test Rackservers.com delivers an impressive package with storage capacity very high on the agenda. Supermicro is proving a very popular choice for many system integrators with three servers in our group test comprising various mixtures of this manufacturer's motherboards and chassis. The 6025B-3RB uses essentially the same chassis as the Transtec 302L which comes with eight hot-swap drive bays. However, Rackservers.com has been more adventurous with storage and this solution neatly shows off the many benefits of using a SAS controller. For the operating system you get a pair of 147GB high performance SAS drives configured as a mirror whilst general data storage is handled by no less than six 750GB Seagate SATA drives. Because SAS controllers support both the SATA Tunneling Protocol and serial SCSI Protocol you can link both drive types to the same controller and backplane hot-plug connectors. The serial point-to-point interface also provides a full duplex 3Gb/sec link to each hard disk. Even with all this storage on tap you don't lose out in other critical areas as although you only get 4GB of memory the 6025B-3RB does sport a pair of 2.33GHz quad-core Xeons. The cooling arrangements are the same as for the Transtec server with three fans looking after the entire chassis so you'll find operational noise levels a little on the high side. The server doesn't use a riser card for the expansion slots so although you're limited to half height cards all available PCI-X and PCI-e slots are up for grabs. Server management is present and correct as the server also comes complete with Supermicro's IPMI 2.0 remote management card. This provides web access for remotely controlling the server, accessing power controls and using virtual devices for booting the server whilst the SuperO Doctor III utility delivers general web monitoring software tools.
		We particularly like this choice of motherboard as it combines both Intel six-port SATA and Adaptec eight-port SAS embedded controllers making for a very tidy internal design with minimal cable related clutter. The SATA ports do lie idle but the SAS interfaces are presented to the drive backplane on the motherboard edge as a pair of four-port connectors. This makes light work of cabling as Rackservers.com has fitted two breakout cables allowing the SAS controller to look after all drive bays. The other bonus is the ZCR (zero channel RAID) slot has an Adaptec-based PCI-X card installed. The embedded HostRAID function offers basic drive striping and mirroring but the card takes over the SAS ports to deliver RAID-5 and -50 array support and with no extra cables required
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Verdict : A well-balanced server with a good choice of motherboard plus a smart mix of SAS and SATA drives delivering a valuable combination of high performance and huge capacity		IT Pro Rating:


		March 2006
Specifications : Supermicro SC-813 1U rack-mount chassis; Supermicro X6DHR-3G2 motherboard; 2x 2.8GHz dual-core Xeons with 2 x 2MB L2 cache; 800MHZ FSB; Intel E7520 chipset; 2GB PC2-300 SDRAM expandable to 16GB; Adaptec AIC-9410 eight-port SAS chipset; LSI Logic SAS 8408E PCI Express 8x RAID controller card with 256MB of cache memory; supports RAID0, 1, 5, 10 and JBOD; 4 x 147GB Fujitsu 15K SAS hard disks in hot-swap carriers; 2 x Intel PRO/1000 MT Gigabit Ethernet; Supermicro Super0 Doctor III and LSI Logic MegaRAID Storage Manager software supplied.
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Verdict : The Evolution XD1 provides a fine specification, including dual-core Xeon processors, a large number of SAS hard disk and extensive RAID features into the bargain.


		January 2005
The RX3M-3200D-5T shows clearly the advantages of opting for SATA over SCSI for your server storage.
Specifications : 3U rack-mount chassis; Supermicro X6DHE-G2 motherboard; dual Intel Xeon 3.2GHz with 1MB Level 2 cache; Intel E7520 chipset; 2GB DDR2-400 ECC SDRAM expandable to 16GB; 3ware Escalade 9500S-12 PCI RAID controller with 128MB cache memory supports RAID0, 1, 5, 10, 50 and single-drive arrays plus hot-swap and hotspare; 12x400GB Hitachi Deskstar SATA/150 hard disk in hot-swap carriers; integrated dual-port Intel gigabit Ethernet; 2x PCI-Express 8x slots; 1 x PCI-Express 4xslot; 1x133MHz 64-bit PCI-X slot; 2x 100MHz 64-bit PCI-X slots; IPMI 2 BMC card; ATi Rage XL graphics chipset with 8MB memory; 3 x 325W hot-plug power supplies; 3ware 3DM and Supermicro IPMI View and Super0 Doctor III software supplied.
		With the RX3M-3200D-5T you get a whopping 4.8TB of storage in a single 3U servers.
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Verdict : This rack server delivers a good specification, plenty of remote management tools and a mass of SATA-based storage at a price SCSI can't match.