Product Reviews

Despite being a low-profile 1U rack server, Boston's Igloo 2500GP delivers a fine specification with some unusual features you won't find elsewhere.

Supplied as an all-Supermicro package, the X7DWU motherboard shows off this manufacturer's UIO (universal I/O) technology. UIO was developed with the aim of reducing the number of motherboard variations within a family, allowing design and manufacturing costs to be cut. While many manufacturers have opted for embedding components such as networking, SATA, SAS and RAID storage facilities, Supermicro's UIO allows the motherboard to be customised with a selection of high-performance options.

The UIO cards fit neatly into the gap at the back of the L-shaped motherboard and plug directly into an interface slot at the bottom of the central riser card. This is a neat arrangement, as the UIO card sits flush with the motherboard so doesn't obstruct the riser card's own expansion slot above it. The review system came equipped with the latest AOC-USAS-S8iR SAS RAID card. This incorporates an Intel IOP348 processor and 256MB of cache memory, but also comes with the iButton enabler that adds RAID6 dual-redundant arrays.

Supermicro currently offers eight SAS UIO cards, with some accepting an optional battery backup pack. Dual-port Gigabit and 10GbE CX4 cards are also available, or you can opt for a dual-port InfiniBand version instead. If you opt for the network option this won't cause any serious problems for storage, as the motherboard itself has an embedded Intel 6-port SATA controller that also supports RAID5.

And storage is another area where this server scores well, since it supports 2.5in SFF hard disks and has enough room for eight hot-swap drives across its front panel. There's still room at the front for a DVD drive, and with the system supplied with an octet of 500GB Hitachi SATA drives you get 4TB of raw storage to play with. This arrangement also now makes RAID6 more feasible, and to prove it Boston configured two drives as a mirror for the OS partition and the rest as a RAID6 data drive.

There's

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clearly a lot going on in this server, but it still manages to present a tidy interior. The price includes a pair of 2.5GHz L5420 Xeons and these are the lower power models with a TDP of only 50W. You also get 4GB of fully buffered memory, which can be expanded up to 64GB. Cooling is handled by a bank of four dual-rotor fans and a plastic shroud directs air over the processor's passive heatsinks and memory modules. Once the fans had settled down after power up, we found overall noise levels were reasonably low and very similar to the ProLiant DL180 G5 server (see p???).

Boston's choice of components pays off in the power stakes, as our inline meter measured it drawing 22W when powered down and 182W with Windows Server 2008 in idle. With SiSoft Sandra pummelling all eight cores at 100% utilisation, this rose to a peak of 250W. The similarly equipped HP ProLiant DL360 G5 was measured at 30W when powered off, 213W with the OS in idle, and 310W under heavy load.

For remote server management HP's iLO2 embedded controller is still the standard setter, but Supermicro isn't that far behind. The server came with its AOC-SIMSO+ board, which incorporates a Raritan chip for KVM over IP services and slots into a mini-PCI slot on the motherboard. It has the extra header backplate wired up, which blocks the second PCI-E expansion slot, but presents a dedicated management network port.

The board provides a tidy web interface, offering plenty of data about all motherboard sensors that can be linked up to email alerts. Virtual boot devices are supported, as are remote power controls, and you also get full server remote control included as standard. Access is possible using the bundled IPMI View utility, which provides a dashboard of dials on temperatures, fan speeds and voltages, plus controls for recycling power and performing graceful server shutdowns.

For general remote and local server monitoring you can use the SuperO Doctor III utility, which provides plenty of operational information on all critical system components. Basic remote-control facilities are also provided, so you can access the server from another system, gracefully shut down the OS, and control power. The bundled Adaptec Storage Manager provides local and remote administrative access to the UIO card, where you can view physical and logical drives, configure new arrays and set up email notifications in the event of errors or failures.

Along with a fine spec, the Igloo 2500GP delivers unique expansion features. Storage potential is good, remote server management is present and correct and power consumption is commendably low.