Tatung TSS-1851

No remote-management options were supplied on the review system, but the MSI motherboard does have a SODIMM socket specifically for the optional QLogic Zircon UL BMC (baseboard management controller) card. After installation, this needs to be cabled through to a small card that takes over one of the PCI slots and provides three Ethernet ports for issuing SNMP traps and management information. Access to the BMC is via MSI's new iConsole Windows utility, which offers in-band access when the server is running and out-of-band access for when the server is powered down. iConsole provides plenty of operational information about processors, temperatures, voltages and fan operations, and offers automatic restart capabilities plus remote boot-time access. Alas, without the optional BMC, all you get is MSI's PC Alert III utility, which isn't practical for server monitoring. It does provide lots of pretty graphs and dials, but alerting facilities are non-existent and we found it constantly hung under Windows Server 2003.

The TSS-1851 is a solid MSI-based workhorse that delivers a good specification for the price, including that all-important power fault tolerance - a feature few 1U rack servers currently offer. However, bear in mind the price for the review system doesn't include any remote management facilities, so we heartily recommend spending the extra £60 to add MSI's BMC and iConsole bundle.

Author: Dave Mitchell