Product Reviews

Never afraid to try something new in the server market, Supermicro's latest rack server brings together a quite unique range of features that target three key areas - noise levels, power consumption and cost. Supplied for review by Boston Ltd, the Igloo 100LP uses a mini-chassis, claims to run at less than 80W even under peak load and, at a mere £599, looks to tick the value box.

The 100LP is delivered in Supermicro's 1U passive rack chassis, and at less than 27cms in depth certainly won't take up much rack cabinet real estate. An extra benefit of this is that two of these servers can easily be mounted back to back in the same rack slot.

There isn't much to see at the front, since no bays are provided for DVD or floppy drives and the panel has two large grilles to facilitate air flow over the processor. The power switch is accompanied by a useful display panel with status LEDs for power, the network ports, disk drive activity and temperature warning.

No quick-release buttons are provided on the lid, but with this removed we found the interior up to Boston's usual high standard: cabling was neatly routed and secured out of harm's way. To the right is a 200W high-efficiency, low noise output power supply, while on the other side is a fixed bay that accepts two 2.5in SFF hard disks.

These smaller drives are proving to be highly popular in many rack server solutions, as they use far less power and have a lower heat output than the larger 3.5in varieties. Storage capacity is no longer a casualty, as Boston supplied the server with a pair of 320GB Hitachi Travelstar drives. The embedded Intel SATA controller puts RAID on the menu, although with the 100LP a simple mirror is the only realistic option.

Considering its compact dimensions, the X7SBL-LN2 motherboard delivers a decent range of features. The single processor socket supports dual- and quad-core Xeons, but on the 100LP Boston has gone for a simple 2GHz Celeron 440 module. This may offer only a single core but it does use the latest 65nm manufacturing process and has an incredibly low TDP (thermal design power) rating of a mere 35W.

Cooling is handled by a chunky copper heatsink with a small blower fan mounted in top. Four DIMM sockets are located alongside, and the 1GB of DDR2 memory in the review system can be upgraded

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to a maximum of 8GB.

No doubt the two burning questions are whether the 100LP delivers in the noise and power department. It certainly has a low audio footprint as, although you can clearly hear the fans, we found the 100LP to be quieter than most of the desktop PCs spread throughout the lab. The processor blower fan actually vents air out the front, but after the initial power-up phase it settled down to little more than a whisper. In a nutshell, we'd be quite happy if this server was sitting on our desktop.

And so to power, which we tested using an in-line meter that registered a tiny 3W power draw with the server turned off. With the server running Windows Server 2003 R2 and idling along, consumption settled to around 42W and with SiSoft Sandra pummelling the Celeron to a full 100% utilisation we saw this rise to no more than 57W.

Server management features are basic, as the review system only came with Supermicro's Supero Doctor III, which provides remote web access services. It's about time Supermicro redesigned the interface, as it's looking a tad dated, but it's capable of providing plenty of operational information.

It opens with a summary on all installed components, which can be customised to suit, and the health page provides graph and dial readouts on the fans, temperatures and the power supply. Basic remote control facilities are also provided, so you can access the server from another system, gracefully shutdown the OS and power off the server.

The embedded RAID controller teams up with Adaptec's Storage Manager, which provides a slick interface that monitors the drives and arrays and can remotely access Adaptec controllers in other servers. It provides an event log, but this doesn't include a notification system for detected errors or faults. For improved remote access, the server supports the optional AOC-SIMLC-HTC management card that offers IPMI 2 over LAN services but not KVM over IP.

It comes with the IPMI View utility, which allows you to keep a close eye on general system health, monitor critical system components and send out warnings if problems are detected. Both pager and email alerting are supported and you can choose from fan speeds, voltages, temperature and chassis intrusion items that you want to monitor. We'd recommend this upgrade if you want full control over power on the server.

Performance clearly isn't a high priority with the Igloo 100LP, but as a solution for providing basic network services it offers some unique advantages. Its low noise levels make it well suited to office environments, it offers particularly good value and its extremely modest power consumption makes it environmentally friendly.