Axiom Server S23 Series

Here’s a good choice for mid-sized work groups. The Axiom server we reviewed had a basic configuration of PIII 1 GHz, 256 MB ECC RAM, one 9 GB Ultra 160 SCSI hard drive, and three 18 GB hot-swappable hard drives with an Ultra160 SCSI RAID Controller.

The server has good upgradability options. You can add an extra CPU, and upgrade the RAM all the way to 4 GB. You can also increase the number of hard drives to 10. Not only that, but it also supports Adaptive Load Balancing, allowing you to add 3 more 100 Mbps network cards, thereby scaling the bandwidth to a 400 Mbps full duplex. This also offers redundancy in that even if one network card fails, others can take over automatically. The server also has a redundant power supply.

The server comes with Intel Server Control management software, which integrated into other management software such as Intel LANDesk and HP OpenView Network Node Manager. The software can measure various server parameters, and notify through broadcast or SNMP. Other management features of the server include hardware failure detection for voltage, fan, and power supply.

We tested the server using NetBench 7.0.1from eTesting Labs, which measures the performance of file servers as they handle client I/O requests. We stressed the server on an isolated 100 Mbps Switched Ethernet network. Both the server and clients were set to work in 100 Mbps full duplex mode. The benchmark measures how much throughput the server was able to achieve and the response time. Starting with a single client, we increased the load in increments of 4 all the way up to 23. As each client constantly bombarded the server with I/O requests, it actually acted as multiple clients. The clients were a mix of machines ranging from Pentium 133 MHz to P4 based systems, which would be the case in any real life organization. We noticed that the server’s throughput scaled up as the clients increased. This trend continued all the way up to 20 clients, where the total throughput touched about 76 Mbps. After this, with 23 clients, the throughput became steady, probably due to a limitation of the 100 Mbps network. Adding another network card would definitely improve things beyond this point. We ran the same benchmark with a single and two CPUs, but didn’t notice any difference in results. So if you have to use it purely as a file server, then a single CPU should be sufficient. However, if you plan on turning it into an application server, then an additional CPU would definitely help. This is because while a file server does more file I/O, application servers stress the CPU.

Overall, a well priced server with plenty of room for scalability.

Anil Chopra at PCQ Labs