Fujitsu Siemens Primergy RX200 S4 in Servers

Motherboard design gets our thumbs up as the two processor sockets are located at the front but leave enough room for two banks of six DIMM slots to be positioned down the side. The price includes a basic 2GB of FB-DIMM memory and this can be expanded to a maximum of 48GB. Cooling is handled by six dual-rotor fans and we found operational noise levels low enough to make this one of the quietest 1U rack servers we've had in the lab. Furthermore, the server doesn't have to be taken offline in the event of a fan failure as they're all hot-swappable and the lid has a separate hatch right above them for easy access.

More fault tolerance features are on the menu as the two Broadcom Gigabit network ports can be teamed together into high speed load balanced links or where one remains in standby mode. Power is covered as there's room at the back for a second hot-plug supply. Memory comes into this equation as the mirroring feature divides all system memory in half and maintains two copies whilst sparing reserves the last memory bank to act as a standby in the event where too many correctable errors are detected in another bank.

The RX200 S4 brings together a good combination of build quality, design and expansion potential and delivers it at a sensible price as well. Plenty of fault tolerance is on tap and the extra work Fujitsu Siemens has put in recently on its remote management features has paid off as it now rivals HP in this department.

Author: Dave Mitchell