Dell PowerEdge 2600

A certain amount of duplication is evident in Dell's IT Assistant, although this utility is designed to configure, manage and monitor not only Dell servers but also Dell PCs, workstations and laptops that have the agent software installed. It runs a discovery routine and displays all systems found ready for easy selection. From here, you can set up alerts to keep you informed of any problems, flash a system's BIOS, shut down or wake up WOL (WakeOn LAN)-compliant systems and run basic inventories.

Running as an MMC (Microsoft management console) snap-in, Array Manager looks after the RAID controller and associated storage devices on local and remote servers. It presents a tidy interface from which you can view the controller and physical and logical drives, check on free space and use the Windows Disk Administrator. Alerting is limited to the NT Event Log, but you can tie storage-related errors and events into the Server Administrator.

There's no denying Dell's servers just keep on getting better, as the PowerEdge 2600 offers a tempting specification at a reasonable price. Redundancy and build quality are excellent and the system has enough expansion potential to cope with increasing demand for many years.

Author: Dave Mitchell