IBM eServer xSeries 225

If you're looking for one of the biggest choices of entry-level and workgroup servers, look no further than IBM's eServer xSeries family of Intel-based systems. The xSeries 225 on review targets file and print services plus light application server duties. It offers small businesses plenty of options to mix and match, as it can be provided as a tower or rack-mount system, and a version with hot-swap redundant power supplies is also available.

This sleek, black chassis offers the typically high standard of build quality we've come to expect from IBM. Physical security is good, as the side panel can be secured and the mechanism also locks down a metal plate to the side of the storage bay. This stops the six hot-swap drives from being removed. Internal design is reasonably tidy, although the large bracing bar that runs the entire length of the chassis does hinder access for maintenance and upgrades and is a pig to remove. Cooling is well catered for, however, as the bracing bar supports a large fan and ducting over the motherboard. Team this up with two rear-mounted fans and a fourth in front of the drive bays and you have one very cool customer. IBM was an early adopter of tool-free maintenance so you'll find all components are held in place with plastic locking clips.

For the lower end of the server market, IBM stopped manufacturing its own motherboards some time ago and in most cases has settled on MSI as its main supplier. Consequently, you'll find the 225 is built around an E7505 Master-LS2, which is based on Intel's latest chipset. The only significant differences with the E7501 chipset come down to the fact that the E7505 is also aimed at high-end workstation applications so you get integrated audio, USB 2 support and an AGP 8x interface. The latter is largely redundant, as the MSI board has a separate mini-PCI slot in the centre. This is occupied by an MSI-9513 add-in card equipped with an ATi Rage XL chipset, and its external connector is wired through to the rear panel. The slot accepts an MSI FireWire adaptor card as well. With a Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet adaptor also integrated on the main board, all PCI slots are up for grabs. On offer are a single 32-bit slot and four 64-bit, 100MHz slots, with one capable of supporting Intel and LSI Logic ZCR (zero-channel RAID) controllers.

The embedded LSI Logic 53C1030 storage controller chipset is an interesting feature, as along with a pair of Ultra320 SCSI channels, both supporting up to 15 drives, you get integral drive mirroring as standard. This is slightly different to a RAID-1 array, because the chipset also supports a hot-standby drive - a feature normally only available with RAID-5 arrays.

However, there are a number of drawbacks to this arrangement, as the drive backplane can only be connected to one SCSI channel on the motherboard and the chipset only supports a single mirror and spare. Although you have room for up to six drives, just three can ever be included in this arrangement. The spare SCSI channel also hasn't been routed through to the rear panel, where it could make itself useful by looking after external devices such as tape drives or another disk array.

IBM didn't supply the system with an OS pre-installed, so this gave us a good opportunity to try out its ServerGuide utility. Suffice to say, it gets things off to a flying start, as this bootable CD-ROM offers to lead you through setting up the hard disks, creating a system partition, installing drivers and loading your chosen operating system. Using IBM's ServeRAID utility, we also opted for the full dual drive mirror with hot-standby drive, after which the OS installation is largely an unattended affair. A useful feature is that you can install the OS and then configure the mirroring option later on.