Alan Stevens

Dell PowerEdge R815

The first of the big-name vendors to deliver a server based on AMD's new 16-core Opteron 6200 series (Interlagos) processors, Dell has stolen a march on the competition with an affordable yet highly scalable 2U platform offering all the usual PowerEdge trimmings.

November 13, 2011 by Alan Stevens in Servers

Gateway GT350 F1

The Gateway GT350 F1 is a well-made server from Acer with scope to handle a wide variety of applications and workloads, both in small businesses and on larger corporate networks.

September 10, 2010 by Alan Stevens in Servers

HP ProLiant ML370 G5

The first thing you notice about the <a href="http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/sm/WF25a/521-525-358265-358265-12083545-12572504.html">HP ProLiant ML370 G5</a> is its size. It’s massive, with room for not just the latest dual-core Xeon processors but enough memory, storage and other options to suit a wide range of applications. Because it’s very solidly built, the huge desk-side tower housing the ML370 is extremely heavy, requiring two people to lift it. It can also be rack mounted if required, although it ends up 5U high and the rack would need to be well anchored to prevent it tipping — especially if you choose any of the optional extras. Our review model, for example, came with a redundant second power supply and an additional bank of hot-swap fans. You can also add a lot of storage, making for a very heavy and, at times, quite noisy system.

February 26, 2007 by Alan Stevens in Servers

Boston Green Power 2200-T

An affordable high-density server platform, the Atom-powered Green Power 2200-T can't match a conventional blade server on processing terms, but beats it hands-down on power and cooling. If that's important to you, and you don't need massively scalable servers, it could be just the ticket.

July 7, 2011 by Alan Stevens in Servers

Boston Fenway 1580-06

A hugely capable 8-way server, the Fenway 1580-06 isn't for everyone, but for large-scale databases, transaction processing, server consolidation and cloud-based computing applications it's hard to match, with the bonus of GPU processing capabilities if needed.

September 29, 2011 by Alan Stevens in Servers

Dell PowerEdge 2850

Unlike desktop PCs, network servers tend to evolve gradually, vendors preferring to update existing products as new technologies get released rather than launch completely new models. This is exactly what’s happened with the PowerEdge 2850: it may have been a mainstay of the Dell server range for over two years, but thanks to support for dual-core processors, it's still a force to be reckoned with.

June 15, 2006 by Alan Stevens in Servers

Sun Fire X4270/4275

<p> Think of Sun Microsystems and you're likely to think of big RISC-based servers and high-end workstations running the vendor's own Solaris operating system. However, that's not all the company has to offer. Industry-standard hardware based on Intel and AMD processors have been on the Sun books for some time, and Xeon 5500 platforms have recently been added that more than measure up when compared to the better-known competition. </p>

August 20, 2009 by Alan Stevens in Servers

Mesh X-Serve 146

With the server marketplace dominated by big-name vendors like Dell, HP and IBM it’s easy to overlook others, such as <a href="http://www.meshcomputers.com/">Mesh Computers</a>, who are equally able to meet the needs of small businessses. Moreover, Mesh's X-Serve 146 is quick, remarkably well specified and, with Microsoft's <a href="http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/os/0,39024180,39147907,00.htm">Windows Small Business Server 2003</a> included in the price, great value for money.

February 2, 2006 by Alan Stevens in Servers

IBM System x3455

Like both Dell and HP, IBM sells a variety of industry-standard servers based on Intel dual-core, and now quad-core processors. However, IBM was also one of the first server vendors to use AMD silicon, and the model we looked at, from its xSeries family, is based on the latest dual-core Opteron chips introduced in 2006. There are several different AMD models in the xSeries line-up: the <a href="http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/uk/x/rack/x3455/">System x3455</a> is a 1U rack-mount server targeted primarily at customers looking to run compute-intensive scientific, technical and financial modelling applications. As such, it can be fitted with two dual-core Opteron processors but is somewhat restricted when it comes to storage and redundancy options.