Product Reviews

Toshiba was a relative latecomer to the UK server market, only releasing its Magnia range over here during 2000. When we took a look at its entry-level offering, the Magnia 3030, we were impressed with the general build quality, expansion potential and management features. However, even though the server range was announced in 1999, we had to wait a number of months before availability, and it has been a similar story with the Magnia Z300. Still, the wait looks well worthwhile, as the Z300 is more than a little unusual.

Toshiba excels at notebook design, and it has used this expertise to produce a server that it claims is the world's smallest dual-processor server. Its modest dimensions of 99 « 233 « 426mm (H « W « D) leave little room for argument, but there's more to the Z300 than meets the eye, as it offers a number of unique features. The Z300 also targets wireless applications and, to this end, comes with an integrated Type II PC Card slot ready to take an optional 11Mbits/sec wireless PC Card. Clients can connect to the server in InfraStructure mode and access all network resources, as Toshiba has developed its own software that allows the server to act as an access point. It provides most of the features you'd expect to see in a standard access point. You're able to specify an ESSID (Extended Service Set Identifier), select a wireless channel and implement WEP encryption. Further security measures include restricting access by MAC address filtering and stopping clients trying to connect using the default 'ANY' network name.

The Z300 range starts with the system unit, and this can be expanded easily by adding up to two SCSI hard disks and two I/O device cabinets. The latter is offered with either DAT DDS-4 or AIT-2 backup tape drives. The hard disk cabinets each support up to four hot-swap drives, and all expansion units adhere to the same sleek design philosophy. Physical security is good, with all units featuring lockable front panels and intrusion detection switches. The system unit is particularly interesting, as it packs in a choice specification that belies its compact dimensions. Behind the front panel, you'll find a small hot-swap bay holding two ATA/100 hard disks, the review system being fitted with a pair of 75Gb IBM Deskstar drives.

The motherboard provides an embedded AMI MegaRAID IDE 100 controller chipset, allowing the drives to be configured in a RAID-0 or -1 array. RAID options don't end there, as the chassis has room for optional AMI single or dual controller cards, which extend RAID levels -0, -1, -5, -10 and -50 to the expansion units. The review system came equipped with an

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AMI MegaRAID Express 500 single-channel controller, and the three Seagate Cheetah drives in the expansion unit were configured as a RAID-5 array.

A peek inside the Z300 system unit shows that Toshiba hasn't wasted any space at all - the only problem is getting inside it in the first place. It would be advisable to specify as high a specification as you're reasonably able to afford, because the Z300 isn't simple to upgrade. Adding another memory module, for example, requires both cover panels, the top panel of the steel internal case and the power supply to be removed first - a manoeuvre requiring 23 screws to be extracted. Even so, the Z300 is an impressive piece of engineering and miniaturisation. The system uses a custom Toshiba motherboard equipped with a VIA Apollo Pro133AX logic chipset, which supports low-cost PC133 SDRAM memory. Three memory slots lurk underneath the power supply, and the system can be upgraded to a maximum of 3Gb. Towards the front sits a small daughterboard with a PC Card socket that only accepts wireless PC Cards, which are easily fitted through a slot in the front panel. As with low-profile rack-mount servers, cooling needs to be dealt with efficiently, and the Z300 uses a large but remarkably quiet blower fan located behind the power supply, and two smaller fans at the rear of the chassis.

The motherboard provides a single 64-bit, 66MHz PCI expansion slot, and even here you have more choices. The basic riser simply converts the PCI slot to a horizontal mount, while a SCSI version has an embedded Adaptec AIC-7892B chipset that allows an Ultra160 channel to be routed through to the rear panel via a short ribbon cable. This arrangement still leaves the PCI slot available for the AMI RAID cards. There's more yet, as a pair of embedded Intel 10/100 Ethernet adaptor chipsets provides a fault-tolerant network connection, since they support adaptor teaming and adaptive load balancing.

A Server Setup utility streamlines installation. It helps to load an operating system, create driver disks and configure the RAID controllers, while Toshiba's new HarnessEye/WEB utility offers good local and remote browser-based management facilities. An agent provides information about voltages, temperatures and cooling fan status, and a management proxy is able to collect information from remote servers and pass it on the system running the management console. It's possible to monitor all expansion cabinets, because each can be daisy-chained to the system unit via special cables, allowing operational information to be gathered by the software. An alert log can be used to send out email warnings, and an ASR (automatic server restart) feature will reboot the server if it hangs.

The Magnia Z300 is one of the most unusual servers we've seen for some time and it looks suited to a wide range of applications. True, internal expansion of the system unit is no easy task, but it's remarkable how much power Toshiba has managed to squeeze into such a small unit. You can add extra RAID-protected storage and backup devices as required, and the Z300 can even deliver the same processing power as standard 1U rack servers, as it's possible to fit up to 42 servers into an industry-standard rack.