Product Reviews

The majority of blue-chip server manufacturers rarely take risks with new server designs and technology. Most are content to follow rather than lead. Supermicro, on the other hand, has always been at the forefront of server design, delivering the world's first 1U Itanium 2 rack server (see issue 113, p165) followed shortly by the very first rack server based on Intel's Nocona Xeon processor and Lindenhurst chipset (see issue 121, p200). And it claims yet another world's first with what can only be described as the smallest dual-Xeon rack server we've seen in the PC Pro Enterprise labs.

Reviewed as the SilverEDGE 500SCR SATA from Evesham Technology, this pizza box-sized package really does impress with the number of features squeezed into such a small chassis. It's a standard rack width but barely 36cm deep. There's more, as all interfaces and ports have been moved round to the front panel for easier access. Before we delve inside the server, the first question you have to ask is what market is Supermicro aiming such a small box at? The manufacturer's primary target is the security appliance market as it's designed to support enterprise-level firewall, anti-virus gateway, intrusion prevention and VPN applications. Next on the list are HPC (high performance computing) applications, server clustering and high-density server farms.

In the quest for more internal space, floppy and CD-ROM drives are conspicuous by their absence. Instead, you get power and reset buttons to the left, accompanied by a small LED panel showing the status of power and network connections, disk drive activity and an overheat warning. In the centre are PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports, a pair of USB 2 connectors and a single serial port, a monitor interface and two gigabit Ethernet ports. Indeed, everything is accessed from the front, as even the PCI expansion slot has its backplate located on the right-hand side. The chassis is highly versatile, as it's designed to accept five different dual-Xeon Supermicro boards and four lower-cost Pentium 4 models. Inside it gets very interesting. You can see immediately that the motherboard has merely been rotated through 180 degrees to get the I/O ports at the front. The mainboard supplied for review is a Supermicro

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X6DVL-EG2 that supports dual Xeons, DDR2 memory and sports the lower-cost E7320 Lindenhurst-VS chipset.

All components are aligned to avoid impeding airflow and the four DIMM sockets are to the front, with two occupied by 1GB DDR2-400 modules. Behind these are the processor sockets, and the pair of 3GHz Xeons are teamed up with chunky passive heatsinks. Even the north bridge chip has a hefty heatsink fitted. Naturally, the biggest concern with this system is going to be cooling, and to deal with this Supermicro has installed a trio of contra-rotating fans directly behind the processors. The flow has also been reversed as the fans suck air in through a grille at the rear, pass it over the motherboard and vent it out a couple of mesh panels at the front. Is there a drawback? You bet. The high noise levels emitted by the fans make this server suited only to dedicated server rooms and a full rack of them should come with obligatory ear defenders.

Both ATA and SATA/150 interfaces are provided and storage is handled neatly by a pair of 40GB Fujitsu 2.5in SATA hard disks. These are fitted in a small cage at the back to the right-hand side of the cooling fans. Basic RAID comes into the picture as the SATA controller is equipped with Adaptec's HostRAID feature, which supports RAID0 stripes and RAID1 mirrored arrays. There could also be a SCSI version on the horizon, as Supermicro is currently looking into developing a variant that supports the latest 2.5in Seagate 10K Ultra320 SCSI drives.

As the chassis is using non-custom Supermicro motherboards, you also get the same array of remote server management tools as those found in its standard rack and pedestal servers. General remote-management tools are provided by Supermicro's SuperO Doctor III utility, which offers a slick remote web browser management interface. There's plenty of operational information to hand and you can monitor the health of various critical system components and manage power cycling. The utility can create reports on the system and send out email warnings if errors are detected, and different access permissions can be granted by creating a user list. The SATA controller also gets in on the management act as it's supplied with Adaptec's browser-based Storage Manager utility, which provides good local and remote array administration tools. A SODIMM socket is also provided for Supermicro's optional IPMI 2 BMC (baseboard management controller), which is accessed remotely with its IPMI View utility.

If you can put up with the noise levels, the Evesham offers tremendous hardware package for the price. Furthermore, it may be bundled in the smallest rack-server chassis known to man, but there's no skimping on features or remote management, making the SilverEDGE 500SCR SATA a great choice as a high-power security appliance.