Xeon Servers: They're a Gas, Gas, Gas

Your rusty Plymouth Belvedere of a server has seen better days. It's been a good old wagon, carrying the load of an ever-growing department, but the day it starts belching big clouds of bluish smoke is fast approaching. You're afraid to turn it off because you don't know if it'll ever start up again, and you could've built two more servers with all the parts you've bought to keep it creaking along. If you've been eyeing a shiny new Xeon server, now might be a good time to head to the dealer's showroom for a test drive.

But a fast, expensive Xeon server that crashes five times a day won't get the job done. If that new box can't deliver long stretches of uptime, you might as well stay with the hunk of metal you've got. We checked out seven workgroup servers to see whether the Xeon has legs.

Engineered to outperform standard Pentium IIIs at specific server-oriented tasks, Xeon is the Formula One race car of processors. You can buy Xeons that carry up to 2MB of level 2 cache (standard PIII chips have only a fixed 512KB of this special memory), and the Xeon's L2 cache runs at the same speed as the processor core (in the PIII, the L2 cache runs at half the CPU's speed). Faster cache and more of it translates into faster completion of processor-intensive tasks like database queries. If speed is critical to your business, Xeon's the chip for you.

Without seatbelts, however, the fastest vehicle can be a death trap. Xeon's integrated reliability features, such as error correction and internal temperature monitoring, add a measure of protection to the equation. Before Xeon, server vendors had no choice but to design their own solutions, which added R&D costs to the end product. As Xeon becomes more widely accepted, vendors will be able to save money by relying on Intel's built-in features.

Now imagine an Indy car with two or even four engines. Servers that distribute tasks among multiple processors run much faster than single-CPU systems. Whereas the PIII can support two processors working in tandem, you can team as many as four Xeon CPUs together. However, you'll need a different motherboard, and you'll only see benefits if your OS and applications are multiprocessor-aware.

Select Your Octane Level

In our search for the perfect workgroup server for 100 or fewer nodes, we asked vendors for dual-processor systems running Windows NT 4.0. (Of course, your server needn't run NT. For alternative OSs, see "Operating Options: Linux" and "Operating Options: NetWare.") We required a minimum configuration of 256MB of RAM and 10GB of hard drive storage. We also specified that each server must have at least two 100Base-T network adapters. Otherwise, each vendor was free to add components and software as it saw fit without exceeding $10,000 in price. Acer, Micron, SAG, and Xi Computer submitted systems sporting dual PIII-550 Xeons. Compaq, Gateway, and Toshiba sent in servers running on a pair of PIII-500s.

When specifying your own server, you'll want to choose a system that's engineered for maximum reliability. Heat is a server's archenemy, so look for redundant cooling fans that provide a margin of safety in case a single fan fails. Of the seven servers here, only the Compaq lacked them. Using multiple power supplies that are hot-swappable (meaning you can replace them without shutting down the server) is simply good risk management; all but the Gateway and Toshiba have at least two such power supplies. RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) storage subsystems detect and repair disk failures to ensure that your mission-critical data remains available whenever you need it. All our test systems except the Compaq came with a RAID subsystem. And because tool-free access and snap-out parts can save you hundreds of hours of maintenance time over the life of a server, we've noted each server's construction quirks. Finally, six of the systems incorporate server management features; the Acer, Micron, and Toshiba offer the best arrays of features, monitoring system health and alerting you when things go wrong.

All seven companies represented here provide at least a three-year parts warranty, but only Acer, Compaq, and Gateway do the work on-site after the first year. Micron tacks on two more years of warranty for processor and memory.

Fast Service

After we ran our performance tests and the dust had settled, the Xeon stood tall. The Xi 1100X NetRAIDer used PIII-550 Xeons and a high-end RAID subsystem to win our file service and database tests. In the network test, the SAG took a narrow victory over the Micron and Xi (all three run on Xeons).

But winning a PC World Best Buy award requires more than speed. The Acer Altos 12000 effectively combines Xeon power with abundant room for expansion and the kinds of redundancy and reliability features that make a server serve, not cry out for service.