Product Reviews

When Toshiba announced it was moving into the UK server market last year, I waited with bated breath to see what it would come up with. However, although this news story was covered around seven months ago (see enterprise, issue 62) it's taken until now to get my hands on a review system. Toshiba's range of Magnia servers launched with three products aimed specifically at the small business, medium level and enterprise markets. The Magnia 3030 on review is its entry-level offering.

Build quality is particularly good as the chassis is extremely solid and offers good security. Three front 5.25in bays are provided with one holding a 40-speed IDE CD-ROM drive while below is a large hard disk hot-swap cage with room for up to six 1in drives. The review system was supplied with three 9.1Gb Seagate Cheetah Ultra2 drives, which I chose to bring together into a RAID-5 array as Toshiba had supplied an AMI RAID controller card. Although RAID-5 needs a minimum of three drives to function, it provides excellent levels of fault-tolerance as it uses one drive to write parity data too, so if one drive fails the server will continue to function. Performance is a mixed bag though as read operations are faster due to the data being striped across the drives, but write operations will be slower as parity data has to be written as well.

The lockable front panel is split into two sections so you can secure the hard drives and side panel lock and allow access to the 5.25in bays or stop access to everything. Power redundancy is an option as the 3030 has a bay at the rear which can accommodate two hot-swap supplies, although a downside is that they share a common power connector so can't protect against someone accidentally pulling the plug.

Inside the 3030 you'll find some cable-related clutter although this only hinders access to the IDE connectors. Whereas the majority of blue-chip server vendors use their own motherboards, Toshiba has opted to fit an Intel 440GX+ board instead - a popular choice of clone manufacturers as it offers good-quality server-specific features. However, it's less impressive than the motherboards equipped with the ServerWorks ServerSet core logic chipset as Intel's 440GX chipset only offers a 100MHz FSB and support for up to 2Gb of PC100 SDRAM. Even so, the 3030 posted some respectable scores in both

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SYSMark performance tests that would have given it fourth place overall in the last workgroup server benchtest (see enterprise, issue 72).

Dual-processor sockets are located at the rear with one holding a 600MHz Pentium III module. Mounted alongside are four DIMM sockets and the base 128Mb of memory is supplied on a single module. Cooling is dealt with efficiently as the processor slots are hidden underneath a large metal box with an integral fan that pulls air directly across the modules and vents it out the rear. The entire assembly is secured with a couple of thumbscrews and only takes a few seconds to release. Along with the processor fan, the drive and power supplies have a pair of cooling fans each.

Standard SCSI services are dealt with by an integrated Adaptec AIC-7896N controller chipset offering both Ultra2 and Ultra Wide channels. However, this is unused as the review system had an AMI MegaRAID Ultra2 RAID controller fitted. I found this a curious choice as the motherboard has a RAIDport III PCI slot that's specifically designed to take an Adaptec ARO-1130 controller card which upgrades the embedded SCSI chipset to full RAID support. Naturally, the network connection is handled by an integrated Intel PRO100+ chipset which can be teamed up with other Intel 82559-based adaptors for teaming and adaptive load-balancing. With graphics also integrated, there's plenty of room for further expansion as only one of the six PCI slots is occupied.

Installation is assisted ably by Toshiba's Server Setup utility supplied on a boot floppy/CD-ROM combo. From the tidy menu system you can modify motherboard settings, configure the RAID controller and load your chosen operating system. It's simple enough to use but I found the interminable amount of disk shuffling it required somewhat tedious. Intel's LANDesk Server Manager links up with the motherboard probes and sensors to provide plenty of operational information. Setting up thresholds allows alerts to be generated if faults are detected and it can broadcast warning messages and shut down the server if required. You can designate the COM2 serial port as an EMP (emergency management port) and control the server independently of the operating system with the 440GX+ board also offering a useful feature called PEP (platform event paging). Activate this in the BIOS and you can set the server to call a pager number via an external modem if it detects any problems. The RAID array comes with AMI's Power Console management utility, although the interface looks dated and notification options are limited to sounding an audible alarm if one of the array members fails.

Overall, the Magnia 3030 represents a positive move by Toshiba into the UK entry-level server market. There are a few rough edges, but generally this is a well-built server that offers a decent level of features for the price, room to expand and good management and monitoring tools.