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Server Buying Guide

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

With the increase in the number of employees in an organization, the demand

for better collaboration and resource sharing also starts raising high . This in

turn calls for powerful servers at your datacenter. Again, piling up servers

only on your rack doesn't solve the issue. What you need is cost effective

server for your enterprise. For example having an Intel Dunnington Server at

your workplace as a file server does not makes any sense, because this Intel

server is suitable for work which requires high processing power.

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Performance



The first thing you should know about a server before you actually buy it is

that what is the processing power and can the server take the load of the

enterprise? The Dunnington Server has six cores in a single processor and the

server comes with 4 distinct processors -a total of 24 cores. Performance-wise,

(as per our test results) it was 100-time better than that of a decent Core 2

duo machine with 2 GB of RAM. You can view the detailed review of this server at

http://pcquest.ciol.com/content/search/showarticle.asp?artid=107755. So, it is

important to match the performance of a server with your requirement before

buying it. For example, a decent desktop machine will work for file sharing

among 20-25-user, but if the number of users go beyond this, then the

configuration of the machine should be upgraded accordingly .

Space requirement and RAID



Today, servers come with 500GB of storage space, while some come with 1 TB

with a bit extra cost. While buying a server, look out for the storage space the

server provides, and options for expandability, so that you can add up more

space in future. Check if the server has expansion ports such as USB, external

SATA or SCSI ports which allow you to add more storage space.



Almost all server comes with RAID controller which enhances the efficiency and
reliability of the data that are being stored. This technology provides various

level of data protection. For example in RAID 1, the data is written onto two

HDDs at the same time. If one crashes, the data can be recovered from another

HDD.

Power consumption



Power has become a major concern for CIO's. It's always important that you

buy power efficient server for your data center. Apart from manufacturing

powerful servers, vendors are also looking into building power efficient

servers. For example, Intel's 5400 series of chips consumes as low as 12.5 watts

per core.

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There are vendors who provide power management solutions that allow you to

remotely manage power inside you datacenter. Also, some rack comes with inbuilt

power management solution. You can find more on racks on other section.

Virtualization



Virtualization has now become pretty old technology for organizations to

start relying on. Now enterprises run applications on virtual platform to ensure

more savings and less time in deployment and management. Virtualization

technologies are available both as software and hardware. In software category,

the most well known names include VMWare, Xen, and Microsoft, while the hardware

virtualization vendors include Intel, AMD, IBM, and Sun. Earlier virtualization

was used to be the simulation of hardware for guest OS, in which the guest OS

had to be modified. The guest OS uses some APIs to access the required hardware.

Now things are different; with the help of new technologies, the guest OS need

not be modified and they can access the hardware natively.

Virtual appliance is one of the most powerful concepts of virtualization.

With this technology, one can deploy software solution in just a couple of

minutes. It is basically a virtual hard-disk image of any virtualization

software that can be deployed on any machine, with the same virtualization layer

that used to run on the machine on which it was created. For example, if you

need to deploy a mail server within your organization, there are preconfigured

virtual http://www.pc quest.com/2007//2009/images// available, which you just need to

download from the Internet for the respective virtual machines and then run

them.

HyperTransport 3.1



HyperTransport technology is a high speed, point-to-point technology to connect
processors to each other or processors to I/O or peripherals in servers,

embedded systems, computers, etc. This technology is licensed by HyperTransport

Technology Consortium which includes members like AMD, Cisco, Apple, Sun, etc.

HyperTransport 3.1 aims to provide improved power management and performance;

this new specification will provide maximum clock speeds up to 3.2 GHz which is

a significant improvement from its HTX3.0 that provides clock speeds up to 2.6

GHz. Also the specification will provide maximum aggregate bandwidth up to 51.2

GB/s. And as per the new specification, HyperTransport link can split into two

links on a single connector. This enables HTX subsystem to connect to separate

CPUs, and offer RAS support as well as improved clustering performance. If you

want to know more about this specification, you can find complete specification

at http:// www.hyper transport.org

Services and warranty



Check out the services and warranty provided by the vendor. Are they providing
door services or you need to send the server to them to fix it. Well the door

service is obviously good. Moreover check out the warranty period they offer,

mostly the 3-year warranty period is provided. In addition to this, many vendors

provide enhanced warranty with faster response time. This will cost you some

extra penny but it is worth if you are running mission critical application on

it.

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