HP Integrity rx2600 review

HP was one of the first vendors to support the Itanium 2 processor when it was released in 2002, and it did so with an extensive range of products. However, at the lower dual-processor end of this market, it played a cunning move that covered a number of angles: the original Server rx2600 was also offered as the WorkStation zx6000. HP achieved this simply by standing the server on its side, adding a sleek silver outer cover and modifying the internals to allow it to deliver the AGP graphics required by the target market.

Things haven't altered much in the past year. Despite a name change, the Integrity rx2600 still employs the same chassis - and subsequently has the same great build quality - as its predecessor. Compared with Systemax's new slimline Itanium 2 rack server, the Mission 6502, the rx2600 offers a number of extra features, although storage capacity and future expansion aren't on the plus list, as the 2U chassis only has room for a trio of hot-swap bays. With three 73GB Ultra320 drives installed, this delivers a top capacity of 219GB, but it can be beaten easily by a single low-cost Western Digital Serial ATA drive, making it look less impressive. You could opt for 146GB 10,000rpm Ultra320 drives, but each one will add around £670 to the asking price. It's also worth noting we were advised that Systemax plans to implement future support for SATA drives in its Itanium 2 1U rack servers, whereas HP hasn't made any similar commitments for the rx2600.

The only reason for the lack of storage space in the rx2600 is the location of the hot-swap redundant power supplies. The power input sockets are still at the rear, but HP has moved the supplies to a large bay at the front, as there's no room for them at the back of the chassis. Releasing a couple of plastic tabs at the side allows the main front panel to be removed for easy access to both units. Floppy drives and PS/2 ports are conspicuous by their absence and HP provides four USB 2 ports instead. Underneath the sturdy lid, you'll find large plastic air ducts obscure most of the HP motherboard. However, there's good reason for these, as the rx2600 is endowed with a pair of 1.5GHz Itanium 2 processors equipped with 6MB of Level 3 on-die cache - the fastest model currently available. These will undoubtedly churn out more heat than the processors in the Mission 6502, and HP has certainly taken this seriously - underneath the airflow guide, the processors are fitted with mighty active tower heatsinks, each one equipped with radial fans. In fact, cooling is well handled all round, with four large system fans that are hot-swappable and easily replaced. But despite all this air movement, overall noise levels are extremely low.

Whereas Systemax settled on Intel's E8870, the rx2600 still uses HP's own zx1 chipset co-developed with Agilent. Both chipsets support up to four Itanium 2 processors, but in two-way mode the zx1 offers a faster memory bandwidth of up to 8.5GB/sec as opposed to Intel's 6.4GB/sec. Since the zx1 has a dual role to play, it also supports AGP 4x graphics, which is largely a redundant feature in a server; memory capacity is the only significant factor. If you can afford it, the rx2600 is able to handle up to 24GB, whereas the Mission 6502 only supports a maximum of 16GB. There's plenty of room to expand too, as the motherboard offers a total of 12 DIMM sockets.

The extra height of the chassis has also been put to good use, as a separate cage offers four free 64-bit, 133MHz PCI-X slots (the workstation model has a cage with three PCI slots and an AGP Pro 4x slot). Memory must be installed in matched fours and the rx2600 offers a 'chip spare' feature that allows a single SDRAM chip on a memory module to be bypassed in the event of multiple errors. Management facilities are variable, as the rx2600 comes with a baseboard management controller that provides local and remote monitoring and diagnostics facilities. However, it's disappointing to see this still only supports the IPMI 1 specification. Server setup and OS installation are helped along by the bundled Foundation Pack, which includes a SmartSetup disc. For general browser-based remote management and monitoring, you can use HP's Insight Manager 7, which provides plenty of information about system operations and good alerting facilities.