We went with a new document imaging company at work and part of the package was a new server. Since it was part of the deal we didn't have a lot of input into which server we got. We couldn't be happier with the choice though. The PowerEdge is a very reliable machine with plenty of everything we need.

The Basics
The PowerEdge 2650 is a dual processor server capable of accepting two Xeon processors up to 3.2 Ghz each. It has 6 memory slots, with each capable of handling a 2 GB chip for a max RAM of 12 GB. It has slots for 5 hard drives with a max capacity of 146 GB each. RAID options include 0, 1, 5, and 10. More on what this can mean later. It has the basics for the rest, VGA output, dual Gigabit NICs. As with most servers, it has a rack-mount option.

Storage Options
The PowerEdge has a number of storage options available. Your storage options are essentially how many, how fast, and what size hard drives you wish to install and your RAID configuration. As stated above, you can install up to 5 drives as large as 146 GB each. If you select the 146 GB option, Dell does not currently have the 15,000 RPM drives, anything lower and you have your choice of 10,000 or 15,000 rpm drives. The speed of the drive describes how many Revolutions per minute(rpm) that the disk spins. The faster the spin, generally, the faster the access time. The RAID configuration you opt for depends on how much data you want to store and how secure you want the data. A brief description of RAID options:

RAID 0 - Disk Striping - RAID 0 essentially allows you to turn all of your disks into one giant disk. The advantages here are increased storage space as you are using all of your drives and speed. The speed comes since the server can simultaneously write your data across all of your drives in small chunks (thus the striping name). The main disadvantage is that you have no redundancy.

RAID 1 - Disk Mirroring - RAID 1 requires two identical sized drives, (or at least paired drives. Dell allows you to set up two sets of disk mirrors). Disk mirroring does exactly what it implies, it mirrors the data on each disk. This is one of the most secure options for data protection. The data is written simultaneously on both drives. If something happens to one drive the other has an exact copy of the data on it. The disadvantages of Disk Mirroring are that you only get half of your disk capacity available to you and speed is not improved as with RAID 0. The big advantage of course is the high level of redundancy.

RAID 5 - RAID 5 requires a minimum of three drives and can go upwards from there. RAID 5 writes data across all drives in the array, like RAID 0. Unlike RAID 0 though, RAID 5 includes a parity bit on a different drive each pass through. This allows the array to absorb the loss of a single drive in the array without losing data. A new drive is inserted into the bad driveĆƒĀ¢€™s position and it automatically rebuilds the data on the new drive. The advantages of RAID 5 are the ability to withstand the loss of a drive, speed as data can be simultaneously written across drives and you get to keep most of your storage space. The disadvantage is that you do lose 1 drives worth of space and you are still vulnerable if multiple drives fail. The latest advances in RAID 5 include RAID 5 with a Hot Swap spare. This configuration requires an additional drive and your total space available will be Total Disk Space across all drives, minus two drives. What this configuration gives you is the advantage of RAID 5 plus when a drive fails, the system will automatically make your hot-swap spare the drive that went bad. Your data is rebuilt and you get an error when you arrive in the morning that indicates a drive went bad, but was rebuilt. All you need to do is replace the bad drive and it automatically becomes the new spare.

RAID 10 - RAID 10 is not one of the original RAID arrays. It is basically a set of disk mirrors that have a stripe across it. So it is RAID 0 across a set of RAID 1 drives. You get extra protection as each of the disks in the stripe is mirrored. You get some speed improvement but you also lose half of your drives.

As you can see, you have a lot of options available to you in your hard drive/storage selections. What is right for you will depend on your needs.

In our case, the company that selected the drives opted for RAID-5 with hot-swap spare. Our data is relatively safe and we have good speed with the drives. Even with intense read/write operations we have noticed no noticeable time lags from the drives. We have experienced a drive failure with this arrangement on another server. We feel very confident in the selection for our storage needs.

Our Options
Our server runs our online data retention (reports, receipts, various documents) and requires SQL Server as a backend for this application. With SQL Server running, we went with 3 GB RAM. This is plenty for just about everything we ask of this server. We also make use of the Gigabit NIC as large amounts of data are transferred to and from this server on a daily basis. The NIC has never been the cause of a bottleneck. Ours is a slightly older model and has 2 2.4 Ghz Xeon processors. The computer performs quite well with this configuration. I would like to see what it could do with a little more RAM and processor, but it meets our current needs. We also went with the redundant power supply and redundant cooling options. These give us a little more peace of mind in case of failures.

Operating System Options
The PowerEdge can be order with Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Windows 2003 Server (both standard and enterprise editions), Novell Netware (5.1 and 6.5), or Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Ours has Windows 2000 server and performs quite well with it. I've also seen it performing flawlessly under Windows 2003 Server on someone else's server. The nice variety of OS options is a pleasant surprise.

The Bottom Line
We are very happy with our Dell PowerEdge 2650. It performs exactly as it is expected to with little maintenance required on it other than the usual patching. The ability to add so much redundancy is a definite plus. The small, 2U form factor is quite nice as it takes up very little space in our rack. We had a second one of these servers here for a while. It was a test system to test out new versions of the software running on the main server. It too worked quite well. The only negative I saw in these servers is that they are quite loud. Louder than the custom built servers we already use that have similar options (including redundant cooling). Other than the noise, these servers are an excellent choice.


Recommended: Yes