Server reviews profile a wide range of servers, from standard 1U and 2U offerings from the likes of Dell, HP, Lenovo and others, to customized solutions being proposed for the Open Compute Project. When reviewing compute servers we evaluate the hardware with an eye toward storage specific needs like PCIe slot configuration, thermals and power consumption. When possible we also review servers in clusters to create real world usage scenarios for storage performance testing.
FEATURED by Adam Armstrong
Dell Technologies Brings PowerEdge To The Edge
Today, Dell Technologies announced a slew of new solutions and innovation to help their customers deal with data that is being created at the edge. The new solutions include new edge server designs, smaller modular data centers, enhanced telemetry management and a streaming analytics engine. The new Dell solutions are aimed at helping customers to better realize value of the data coming from the edge as well as quickly gaining insights regardless of where the data resides.
February 9th, 2020 by Lyle Smith
HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 Plus Announced
HPE has announced the ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 Plus, a powerful entry-level server in an ultra micro tower form factor. Organizations can customize the Gen10 Plus for on-premises, hybrid cloud or workloads that need datacenter performance. The server also features the latest Intel Xeon E and Pentium processors with 4x 1GbE onboard NICs and USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A connectivity. Measuring at only 4.6 in (11.7 cm) for height, the Gen10 Plus product is half that of the previous generation (MicroServer Gen10) and can be placed either horizontally or vertically to fit a range of different use cases.
January 18th, 2020 by Brian Beeler
GIGABYTE R281-NO0 24 NVMe Bay Server Hardware Overview Video
The GIGABYTE R281-NO0 is a 2 processor, 2U server designed for demanding enterprise applications. Because of its 24 NVMe bays across the front and plenty of expansion options in the back, the server is also ideally suited for software defined storage as well. The platform supports 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors, along with persistent memory and 24 DIMM slots. Our system is configured with Micron 9300 NVMe SSDs for the primary pool, with 2 2.5" drive bays in the back for server boot duty. In this video we provide an overview of the system and the configuration we've built for review. Read more
January 15th, 2020 by Adam Armstrong
Supermicro SuperStorage 6019P-ACR12L+ Unboxing and Hardware Overview
The Supermicro SuperStorage 6019P-ACR12L+ has just found its way into our lab. This 1U server is designed for high density object storage as well as scale-out storage, Ceph/Hadoop, and Big Data Analytics. The server leverages the company’s X11-DDW-NT motherboard family that allows dual socket 2nd generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Cascade Lake), up to 3TB of ECC DDR4-2933MHz RAM, and supports Intel Optane DCPMM.
December 27th, 2019 by Tom Fenton
Atrust s101C Server Review
The system in this review is an Atrust s101C which is a moderately-priced, mini-server form factor server. The s101C has an Intel Xeon E3-1268L v3 processor, integrated on-board RAID, has Intel AMT for out of bound management, supports up to 32GB of RAM, and two 2.5” SATA drives. It has multiple ports for USB and video and audio connectivity. It also supports various versions of Windows, Linux, VMware ESXi, Citrix XenServer, and Userful Multiplatform.
December 24th, 2019 by Guest Author
Home Lab Deep Dive: Choosing & Buying Servers
Whether it’s for learning technology for a current or future job, “geeking” out on hardware, or giving your household specific services, there are many reasons to own your own home lab servers. I love computer equipment and the feeling of potential productivity in those small sheets of aluminum. I can say without a doubt that my home lab has helped me get to where I am today and it continues to help me even now. Whether one, or all of those are your reasons, you have found yourself here as part of a series for home labs. In this series I will start with basic concepts and ideas so that you can use those to help you design and bring your own home lab to life.
November 22nd, 2019 by Lyle Smith
Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 Review (Intel Scalable 2nd Gen)
The new PowerEdge R640 is Dell’s dual-socket server platform designed for use cases such as dense software-defined storage, application tier service providers, dense private cloud, virtualization and high-performance computing (HPC). This is not to be confused with the previous Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 we reviewed last year. The lastest version is outfitted with two 2nd generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors, opening up uses cases such as HPC.
November 20th, 2019 by Adam Armstrong
SC19 Bits
Our News Bits is a roundup that typically covers news pieces that are just small in content, not in impact. This gives content room to breathe even if it comes in less than what we normally cover. This week SC19 took place in Denver, Colorado. While we covered the major announcements from GIGABYTE,AMD,TYAN,NVIDIA, and Dell EMC, there were several other smaller announcements. These announcements come from vendors such as Viking, DDN, NetApp, and Marvell.
November 20th, 2019 by Adam Armstrong
TYAN Launches 2nd Gen Intel Xeon HPC & Storage Servers At SC19
This week at SC19 in Denver, Colorado, TYAN exhibited its HPC, AI, storage and cloud server platforms. As we covered earlier this week, TYAN released several new solutions leveraging AMD EPYC Rome CPUs. The company also announced new solutions based off of the 2nd generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors.
November 19th, 2019 by Michael Rink
Dell EMC Server Announcements from SC19
Today, at Supercomputing 2019, Dell made a slew of announcements. The company released two new Dell EMC Ready Solutions, announced a Ready Solutions for AI validated design due next month and announced new GPU and FPGA options for its PowerEdge Servers that are slated for sometime early next year.