Broadberry CyberServe SR2625 review

The SR2625 is on the money for performance. The price includes a pair of 2.8GHz Xeon X5560s. There are only two processors in the Series 5500 family faster than these and they all support a top memory speed of 1,333MHz. Each processor is accompanied by six DIMM sockets, and Broadberry's value proposition gets even better with a total of 24GB of DDR3 memory inside.

In terms of expansion, the SR2625's motherboard has I/O connectors and Intel offers a range of port modules including dual and quad Gigabit, dual and single 10GbE CX4, InfiniBand and external four-port SAS. Not content with the two embedded Gigabit ports, Broadberry also includes the quad-port Gigabit I/O card in this price.

The single 750W unit in the review system can be partnered by a second hot-plug supply for power redundancy. With this high specification the SR2625 isn't going to be easy on the power supply, but it isn't a hog either. We measured 14W in standby and 196W with Windows Server 2008 in idle. With SiSoft Sandra maxing out all 16 logical cores, we saw this peak at 338W.

Intel's latest motherboards offer an EFI environment that provides a CLI for basic server configuration and firmware updates. It also supports USB storage devices, but it isn't as clever as Dell's UEFI (unified extensible firmware interface), which also offers full OS deployment tools and driver stores.

Intel's remote management offerings have improved considerably, as the server includes the RMM3 controller. Its web interface provides full access to all power controls, you can view around 50 different sensors for components and see the server's overall health, but email alerting isn't currently supported.

Unlike HP and Dell, you get remote control as standard and the console can be used to access the system BIOS screen and OS. You can define virtual floppy and optical media for the server and secure access with lists of users. LDAP is also supported and all transmissions can be securely encrypted using SSL.

To put Broadberry's price into perspective, we visited Dell's website and conjured up a PowerEdge R710 with a similar specification but with four 146GB SAS SFF hard disks for just below £5,000. Businesses needing to upgrade servers, but with limited budgets, should check out the CyberServe SR2625 - it's big on performance and low on price.

Author: Dave Mitchell