Fujitsu Primergy RX200 S5 review

Fujitsu can't match the A-Listed PowerEdge R610 in a couple of areas. First, the R610 offers a quartet of embedded Gigabit ports, and it also sports Dell's unique Lifecycle Controller. This has an embedded 1GB of NVRAM, which can be used to boot the server into Dell's UEFI (unified extensible firmware interface) and to load an OS.

Cooling is handled by six hot-plug fans at the front of the motherboard. The top panel is split in two, allowing the front portion to be removed to access the fans while the server is running. Fujitsu's Cool-safe makes a fair stab at reducing noise levels, although we found the server wasn't as quiet as the R610.

The RX200 supports one or two hot-plug 770W units, and the review system came with both installed. We found consumption a little on the high side, as our inline meter reported a draw of 27W in standby and 209W with Server 2008 idling along. With SiSoft Sandra maxing out all 16 logical cores, this peaked at 330W.

By comparison, the R610 we reviewed last year had a similar specification, and drew 15W in standby, 144W in idle and 260W under load. However, with the RX200 reconfigured for minimum power usage instead of top performance, SiSoft Sandra couldn't push the draw higher than 250W.

Fujitsu takes the fight to HP's doorstep on the remote management front, as all its latest Primergy servers have an embedded controller. The iRMC2 chip offers a smart web interface with comprehensive status views of critical components and environmental values, along with power controls.

The RX200's processor power-management options enable you to choose between the best performance or minimum power settings, and these can be scheduled for different times of the day. The advanced iRMC2 upgrade brings full KVM over IP and virtual media into the equation.

Fujitsu takes a different tack to Dell and HP as its ServerView Suite software focuses on server management only, rather than trying to include everything under one roof. This makes it much easier to use, since all the components can be accessed from one intuitive interface. The ServerList option allows you to view all servers and provides a complete listing of all hardware components along with their status and current power consumption. A hardware inventory is also provided, and you can link errors or failures with alarms and alerts.

The RX200 S5 offers a very good rack server package. Dell's R610 is still our A-List choice, but if Fujitsu is your preferred supplier then rest assured the RX200 S5 certainly won't disappoint.

Author: Dave Mitchell