Workgroup Servers Stressed

Servers are at the heart of any IT infrastructure, because

they run all critical applications of the organization. The trouble is that one

size doesn't fit all. On one side, different organizations have different

requirements, and on the other, different applications also require different

configurations. So a system configuration that's good for a file server may

not be as good for a Web server. A database server would require different

specification than a mail server, and so on. To help you decide, this time,

while doing the server shootout, we address some of these questions. This time,

we received four servers for evaluation, out of which three were dual-CPU, and

one was dual-core. The difference is that dual-CPU means two CPUs, while

dual-core means a single CPU with two cores. It's supposed to be equivalent to

two CPUs. Both Intel and AMD have recently introduced dual-core processors for

both servers and desktops. We checked all of them for their performance,

features, and pricing. Here's what we looked for in each during the

evaluation.

Features

This can be divided into three parts in servers-manageability, reliability,

and

expandability. Lets look at each, one by one.

Manageability In order to give seamless server

management, servers come with some embedded sensors on the motherboard and the

chassis, which gather important server information, such as CPU temperature,

cooling fan RPM, and pass it to software agents running on the server. This is

then further passed on to a centralized remote management console. Servers can

be monitored in two ways; one is in-bound management and the other is

out-of-bound management. In-band management manages server activities, where

software agents can only work when the OS is running. A better way of management

is when you can monitor and manage the server even if the OS is not up or is in

the sleep state. Out-of-band management requires a separate Baseboard Management

Card (BMC) to be installed. The card comes integrated with some boards, whereas

some boards come with a special connector for adding the BMC. With the help of a

BMC card and remote network management software, system administrators can

monitor and control servers remotely even if the server goes to sleep. There is

another way to provide out-of-band manageability and it is called ASF (Alert

Standard Format). Then in manageability comes management software, number of

meaningful indicators, like error indicators, present on the server and tool

free access to the server cabinet. All these issues should be considered while

buying servers.

Reliability Servers are meant for keeping users'

data safe and provide services to them without any down time. However, hardware

failure may cause both data loss and server downtime, further leading to

business losses. In order to protect yourself from this, you should look for

redundancy features in servers, which will safeguard your data and continue to

run the server even if a component fails. For data protection, the best solution

is RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks). RAID level 5 is most suited for

servers that store high value user data. A RAID 5 solution requires at least 5

disks. To have RAID on your system, you can buy a SCSI RAID card or some

motherboards also have on-board RAID integrated with the SCSI controller. But

while RAID can provide data protection against single disk failures, to replace

the faulty disk you still have to shut down the server, disrupting the services

it offers.

A hot plug HDD cage can help in replacing faulty disks

without shutting down the machine. You can add or remove disks while the machine

is hot (working). Just like hot plug HDD, hot plug, redundant power supply also

makes the server fault tolerant against power supply failures. With the

penetration of SATA disks in the market, server boards are also coming with

integrated SATA RAID and give you all the features of RAID that are similar to

SCSI RAID.

Expandability Future expansion should be kept in

mind while buying a server. It should have plenty of room for expansion should

the need arise in the future. When thinking of expansion, the first thing that

comes to mind is the CPU, and most people end up buying a dual socket machine,

but populate it with only a single CPU. The thought is that the second CPU will

be added in the future when the need arises. If it arises shortly, then it's

not a problem. However, more often than not, the need arises at least a year or

two later. By then, the processor may not even be available, and even if it is,

then it would cost a bomb because your vendor will charge you for holding the

CPU in his inventory for so long. It's therefore better to buy the second

processor right up front. Nowadays, the trend is moving towards dual-core

servers, which is like buying a dual-CPU machine. Even there, you'll find

servers with dual-sockets servers. Since they will take two dual-core CPUs, it

will be like having a four-CPU server. If you do buy a dual-socket server, then

again, you may want to buy the second dual-core CPU up front as well. Next comes

RAM. Most servers let you add up to 4GB of RAM, but going by the pace at which

applications are becoming memory hungry, look for a server that can support up

to 8 GB RAM.

Up next is storage capacity. How many disks does your

server let you add? A SCSI channel can accommodate up to 15 devices, but then

with more devices you will see a performance hit. So Ultra320 is even more

important than going for an Ultra160 SCSI card.

Unlike SCSI, SATA controllers provide limited expansion as

far as number of disks is concerned. An external SCSI connector lets you connect

external SCSI devices, like tape drives, easily without opening the server

cabinet for doing it otherwise. For adding extra cards, like fibre channel and

RAID cards, to your server, you need PCI-X (64-bit) slots, so you should have

enough free slots on your motherboard to accommodate add-on cards.

Performance

Since we looked at workgroup servers this time, our test load simulated that

environment. For our test load, we used 20 machines connected over a Gigabit

Ethernet switch. These were all P4 machines with 256 MB RAM and were running

Windows XP Professional. They all had a Gigabit Ethernet interface. Each machine

was capable of simulating the load equivalent of multiple machines. So our aim

was of course to see which server could be loaded by how much before its

performance came down.

We'd asked all server vendors to send their products

pre-configured with the OS, drivers, RAID, etc. This was to ensure that we got

properly configured and tuned servers from all vendors. All four servers came

pre-configured with an OS. One of them had SATA RAID and the remaining had SCSI

RAID-5. We didn't make any other changes to them, other than essential ones

like assigning the correct IP address for communication. Since these were

workgroup servers, we tested them for file and web serving performance. For file

serving, we used the industry standard NetBench 7.0.3 benchmark, and WebBench

5.0 for testing application performance. While the first benchmark stresses the

server's I/O capabilities, the latter puts pressure on its computing

capabilities. Both tests results were evaluated based on two

parameters-average throughput and response time. Here, higher throughput and

lower response time mean better performance.

Beyond performance tests

Once we'd finished the performance benchmarks, this time, we went a step

further to understand the performance differences due to variations in the

server configurations. We checked what was the difference in performance between

using a dual-core vs. a dual-CPU server. We also tried to see the performance

difference between SATA RAID and SCSI RAID. We even tried to see the performance

difference between single Xeon vs dual-

Xeon servers.

Lastly, all servers came with three years warranty, so we

could only compare their prices. We used the Brown-Gibson model to arrive at all

the weightages.

Connoiseur SkyRunner SR 7520 This server was the most feature rich of the lot and even gave the highest overall performance score. It was also the most expensive server in the shootout. The Sky Runner had two Intel Xeon 3.2 GHz processors, 2 GB ECC RAM and an Intel SR7520JR2 motherboard. It also had the maximum number of fault tolerant features of the lot, including support for RAID 0, 1 and 5. The server shipped with RAID 5 pre-configured. Plus, it supports hot plug hard drives and dual hot plug power supplies. The device came to us with four 73 GB UltraSCSI 320 drives. Interestingly, this server shipped to us with a pre-installed copy of RedHat Enterprise Linux 3 WS (Workstation) OS. It's interesting because it's a server, but it came with a workstation class OS pre-configured on it. We sure do hope that the vendor doesn't ship it like that to its customers, because workstation OS definitely has its limitations compared to a server class OS. Nevertheless, the server gave us really good performance. Tests and results In our tests, the server turned out to be a very efficient Web Server. We used the pre-installed Apache to run our tests on and that too without any tweaking. We just created a Virtual Host on Apache and ran WebBench. The server was able to handle up to almost 3000 requests per second, which was more than double of the next best performer in this benchmark. It gave this performance when the number of clients reached 10. When the number of clients rose beyond that, the performance started dropping and became steady at around 2500 requests with up to 38 clients. Performance in the file serving benchmark was average. The maximum throughput it was able to provide on our test load was 240 Mbits per second, and it peaked with 10 clients. After that, the throughput started decreasing. One reason that might have caused this is that the server was using an older version of Samba (Windows File Sharing for Linux). At a price tag of Rs 1.5 Lakhs, it was the costliest of the lot. Overall, it's an excellent choice if you plan to use it as a Web server. Price: Rs 1,50,000 (3-yrs warranty) Key Specs: Dual Xeon 3.2 GHz, 7520 JR2 Motherboard, 2 GB DDR ECC Reg RAM, Four 73 GB SCSI Hot Plug 10K RPM hard drives pre-configured with RAID 5, Redundant power supply, Two Gigabit LAN Interfaces and six PCI-X slots Contact: Connoiseur Electronics, Bangalore . Tel: 51152203. Email: harish@connoiseur.com RQS# E80 or SMS 131280 to 9811800601

Edge 2550 This server scored second highest in features. Where it missed out in features was three PCI-X slots as against six in the Sky Runner. Plus it didn't have a redundant power supply. But the buyer has an option to replace the normal power supply with a redundant power supply if he requires, by paying additional charges. On the performance front, this server did extremely well in WebBench, but was average in NetBench. In fact, this server got the second highest score in WebBench, which makes it a great choice as a Web server. It managed to serve 1234 requests per second with up to 10 clients, as against the Sky Runner's 2974 requests per second. There are several reasons why this server got the second highest in Web-serving performance. One is that the Sky Runner had dual 3.2 GHz CPUs, while this one only had 3 GHz. Secondly, the Sky Runner had four hard drives configured in RAID 5, while this one had only three. Third could be that in Sky Runner, Apache was running in native mode in Linux, while in this one, it was running on Windows. Since this server uses the same motherboard as the Sky Runner, it had similar management features. It has two Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, which can do teaming as well as failover. On the management front, the server has Intel Professional Management Module, which allows you to do Asset and Performance reporting, Remote server restart, Hardware, RAID, OS and process monitoring, Hardware RAS monitoring, Text Console redirection x IPMI 2.0 and SNMP In Band Management. All these can be managed using Intel Server Management 8.20. This was the only server we received with hardware management tools.  In addition, the server comes with a IDE 52X CD writer so that one can have backup of the server's esential files or other data on the CDs. And its three SCSI hard drives were hot swappable. The server also comes with a keyboard and a mouse. To provide physical security to the server box, it comes with a mechanical lock on its front bazel. Overall the server is a good buy for Web serving, and its cost is also pretty decent at Rs 138,900. Price:Rs 138,900 (3-yrs warranty) Key Specs: Dual Xeon 3.0 GHz with EM64T and 2 MB L2 Cache, Intel E7520 motherboard with 800 MHz FSB, 2 GB DDR ECC Registered PC 2700 RAM, Six DIMM slots supporting up to 12 GB RAM, reliability features like SDDC, scrubbing, retry on uncorrectable errors, memory sparing, and memory mirroring, Three 73 GB SCSI hot plug 10K RPM hard drives with RAID 5, Intel SRCZCRX RAID Card, LSI Logic 53C1020A SCSI controller, Two SATA ports supporting integrated RAID 0 and 1 Contact: SG Systems, Delhi . Tel: 51625065. Email: pankaj@sgsystems.net RQS# E80 or SMS 130980 to 9811800601

Edge 2500 This was the lowest priced server of the lot. It's an entry-level model for basic file serving needs. There was no hot-swap power supply or hot-swap hard drive. It came with SATA RAID 0 configured, offering good performance but no fault tolerance. So even if one drive fails, all data in the RAID array is lost. The server has an Intel Xeon 3.0 processor and 1GB RAM. It gave the second highest NetBench scores. It peaked at 645 Mbps with an impressive 24 clients. As expected, the server didn't do as well in the WebBench test, which stresses the computing power of the server than the I/O. The server peaked at 900 requests per second with up to 10 clients. After that, the requests serving rate gradually declined. Overall, it's a good choice for basic file serving. You can, however, put in a few more drives and a RAID card to configure it for a higher and more failsafe RAID level. Otherwise, it's a good, cost effective choice. Price: Rs 57,800 (3-yrs warranty) Key Specs: Single 3.0 GHz Intel Xeon with 2 MB L2 cache, 2 GB DDR ECC REG RAM, Intel SE7320SP2 Server Board, Two 120 GB SATA drives, CD-ROM Drive, Up to 8 GB registered ECC DDR 266/333 SDRAM supported, dual interleaved memory for improved performance, ATi rage XL SVGA PCI video controller with 8 MB of video memory, Two 120 GB SATA HDDs (with RAID 0) Contact: SG Systems, Delhi . Tel: 51625065. Email: pankaj@sgsystems.net RQS# E80 or SMS 130980 to 9811800601

Acer ALTOS —G320 This was the only one that came with a dual-core CPU. Plus, it had 512 MB RAM, whereas the rest had 2 GB housed on an Intel E7230 server board. Its four memory slots can take up to 8 GB of ECC un-buffered memory. It comes with a 3x73 GB ultra 320 SCSI hard drive connected on ASRC single-channel U320 RAID controller. The server has four SATA ports to accommodate four SATA drives, which can be configured as RAID 0 to 10 with SATA RAID software. Plus it has three 8X PCI-E slots and two PCI slots. The server has the option of putting in Acer EasyBUILD and server management software. It gave excellent file serving scores with NetBench, second to the Edge 2500. But Web serving scores were average. Surprisingly, on raising RAM to 2 GB, the NetBench scores dropped while WebBench score increased a little. It seems to be a good choice for mid-sized businesses, given its existing configuration and price. Price: Rs 88,999 (3-yrs warranty) Key Specs: Single dual-core Intel Pentium D processor 3.2 GHz, Intel EM64T and Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology support, Up to 8 GB of ECC unbuffered memory, up to 1 TB or more of SATA or SCSI HDD storage, three PCI-E and two 32-bit 33 MHz PCI expansion slots, integrated dual-port gigabit Ethernet, integrated four-port SATA software with RAID 0, 1 and 10 support, optional Acer EasyBuild and Acer Server Manager (ASM), optional Acer eBusiness Value Pack Contact: Acer India , Bangalore . Tel: 25219535. Email: ravi_hansdak@acer.co.in RQS# E80 or SMS 130980 to 9811800601

Anindya Roy and Sanjay Majumder with help from

Vijay

Chauhan