A Powerful, Dependable, Affordable 2U Rack Mountable Enterprise Server
Written: May 07 '06
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Pros: Powerful, robust, scaleable, versatile, and reliable; small footprint.
Cons: None
The Bottom Line: If you are looking for a powerful, reliable, versatile, reasonably priced file server, the 2U rack-mountable Dell PowerEdge 2650 Enterprise-class application server will most certainly fit the bill.
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| vemartin's Full Review: Dell PowerEdgeâ„¢ 2650 ( pe2650/224 ) Se... |
Qualifications: I am the manager (Network Administrator) of a medium-sized server farm in the Mid-West, which consists of some 150+ Dell PowerEdge servers of various models and designs. These models include 1750, 1850, 2650, 2850, 2500, 2600, & 6650 servers, running Windows 2003 Standard Server or Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition.
Disclaimer: This review is intended for those with intermediate or advanced server knowledge, or those individuals seeking in-depth information on Enterprise caliber server equipment. Few if any of the terms used throughout the review are expounded upon.
As I stated in my review of the Dell PowerEdge 2850, when you open the door to any modern Network Operations Center (NOC) and you are liable to find all manner of rack mounted servers contently humming away within. From the small 1U’s to the power hungry and space happy 6U’s servers are the life’s blood of the NOC; in fact they are the only reason such facilities exist at all. I have worked with all manner of server from all of the major server vendors; IBM, Hewlett Packard, and Dell, and all offer a variety of servers to fit individual needs, but Dell seems to offer the largest variety of rack mountable boxes, including another 2U workhorse, the Dell PowerEdge 2650 rack mountable server.
The Server:
In The Box
• Dell PowerEdge 2650 2U Server
• Installation CD and manuals
• Dell Open Manage software
• Server Drives and Utilities
Dell designed the PE 2650 for high-availability, 24/7 NOC operations. The 2U rack mountable, five drive server, features dual Intel Xeon processors with a 533MHz Front Side Bus (FSB), and up to 2MB of L2 level cache. The PE 2650 is well suited for computing and memory-intensive applications, such as databases and web-based application like Microsoft’s SharePoint Portal Server. Dell outfitted the PE 2650 with the advanced ServerWorks Grand Champion-LE (GC-LE) chipset that provides a highly respectable 4.2GB/s of memory bandwidth and up to 3.8GB/s of throughput on a five PCI bus segment architecture. In addition, the chipset supports 2:1 memory interleaving the memory.
The PE 2650 also incorporates high bandwidth PCI-X slots (two 64-bit/100 MHz, one 64-bit/133 MHz), dual Gigabit1 network interface cards (NIC’s) for built-in load balancing, as well as high-speed double data rate (DDR) memory banks that support up to 12GB of error-correcting code (ECC) SDRAM in six slots all on a 64-bit dedicated bus.
With three open PCI-X slots and numerous embedded features, you can deploy the PE 2650 in a configuration that supports a wide range of workloads in a data center, including connections to a fiber-channel backbone and optional external SCSI backup drives. Additionally, the PE 2650 server offers an embedded dual channel PERC3/Di RAID subsystem Ultra3 (U160) SCSI controller that supports up to five internal SCSI drives. The controller contains 128MB of battery-backed cache that allows data to be written to a disk even in the event of power outage.
The split backplane design incorporated into the PE 2650 offers considerable configuration flexibility. For instance, you can configure different RAID configurations; e.g. two hard drives set up for RAID (1) to mirror the operating system for redundancy; and RAID (5) for the remaining three drives. Furthermore, the PE 2650’s five hot-plug SCSI hard drives allow up to 730GB of internal storage if (5) 146GB drives are used. Hard drive capacity is broken down by the following: 36GB – 146GB (Ultra320 SCSI) at 10,000 rpm, and 18GB – 146GB (Ultra320 SCSI) at 15,000 rpm. RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 or 50 is supported for data redundancy.
For backup and archiving vital system and data files, the PE 2650 has the capacity to interface with Dell’s PowerVault External SCSI storage units; i.e. PowerVault 100T, 110T, 114T, 122T, 124T, 132T and 136T) and Dell/EMC Fibre Channel storage.
Like all Dell PowerEdge servers, the PE 2650 has an LCD panel on the front to display messages from the system backplane or the Dell OpenManage software suite. Granted the display is capable of only one line of text, but it has proven useful in the past in providing a quick diagnoses of a particular problem.
Data communications is made easy with the inclusion of dual embedded Broadcom Gigabit Server Adapter’s. However, the PE 2650 can also be ordered with other Intel adapter’s such as the Intel PRO/1000 MT single port Gigabit NIC, Intel PRO/1000 MT dual port Gigabit NIC, and the Intel PRO/1000 MF optical Gigabit NIC.
The PE 2650 can be factory-installed with the following Operating Systems:
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Enterprise Server v3
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Enterprise Server v4
Dell has given the PE 2650 many distinctive design features that make the server easy to deploy, service, and manage locally or remotely, such as a tool-less chassis, which enables you to quickly and simply reach components for easy maintenance; the motherboard for instance can be completely swapped out in under a five minutes. Dell’s OpenManage (now on Version 4.5), suite of software enhances manageability, from initial server start-up through everyday operations by allowing for server hardware management via a web interface. Combining performance, availability and configuration flexibility, the PE 2650 server is an ideal solution for small-to-medium businesses where space might be a consideration, and remote sites that require robust internal storage, PCI expandability and high availability features.
Installation and Performance:
Our PowerEdge 2850’s servers usually arrive configured as follows:
• Processor(s):
(2) Intel Xeon @ 3.2GHz/2MB Level 2 ECC Cache/ 533MHz Front Side Bus.
• Memory:
4GB DDR SDRAM 266MHz (4x1GB in four banks).
• Hard Drive Bays:
(5) populated 1” hot-swappable SCSI;
• Hard Drive(s):
2 x 36.3GB 15K RPM Ultra 320 SCSI Hard Drives & 3 x 146GB 15K RPM Ultra 320 SCSI Hard Drives.
• Hard Drive Controller:
PERC4/Di 256MB (2 Internal Channel / 1 External Channel).
• Floppy Disk Drive:
Floppy Drive,1.44M, TEAC2.
• NIC:
(1) Dual port Broadcom Gigabit Server Adapter.
• Video: Integrated ATI Radeon with 16MB SDRAM
• CD-ROM Drive:
24X IDE CD-RW Drive for PowerEdge Servers.
• USB Ports: (2) rear
Our servers arrived from Dell without a NOS installed; however utilizing Dell’s OpenManage software we are able to install Windows 2003 Server without much of a problem. OpenManage also allows for the configuration of the RAID array; e.g. RAID level 0, 1, 5, 10 & 50. All of our PE 2650’s are configured for RAID Level (1) which holds the OS container, and RAID level (5), which holds the data or application container. OpenManage makes configuring the PE 2650 a fairly painless endeavor; it usually takes less than an hour to completely configure each server and install the Network Operating System (NOS).
Depending on the functionality of the server however, some of the PE 2650’s are configured via Microsofts’ Advance Deployment Server, ADS, in which case just the RAID is configured.
The front of the black PE 2650 is taken up mostly by the five 1 inch SCSI drive bays which are arranged in two pairs and one lone drive on the far left hand side of the server. On bottom of that drive sit the floppy and CD-ROM drives. To the far right of the chassis sits the small aforementioned LCD display, a power button, a video connector, as well as NIC status lights. The front of the unit is covered with a removable, lockable black and silver bezel with a small blue status light that is incorporated into the round silver Dell logo in the middle of the bezel. During normal operations the light will remain blue, but if a problem occurs the light will blink red.
The back of the PE 2650 is equally as compact; on the far right you will find the dual GB NIC’s, dual USB ports, which sit underneath the (3) PCI/PCI-X expansion slots. To the left of these connections sit the ubiquitous monitor, mouse, and keyboard ports, as well as and optional remote access controller port, and two hot-swappable 500W redundant (hot-plug) power supplies which house six hot-swappable, redundant fans.
We have fifteen PE 2650 servers installed in our NOC and test lab. We use the servers for production and development installations of Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, Microsoft SQL Servers, and for SQL database storage, all roles for which they are ideally suited. We also use several for other high processor intense applications such as Microsoft SharePoint Service Portal. However, because the PE 2650 is highly scalable, the box could just as easily be used as a departmental file, or specialized server such as a Windows 2003 domain controller, or a Web backend application server.
The two dual core processors coupled with fast RAM and 10K or 15K SCSI hard drives make the PE 2650 a performance workhorse. Actual, real world throughput (file transfers to and from the server), is outstanding, especially when it comes to serving up SQL derived data. The PE 2650’s in our inventory are all at the top of the performance curve, and they are dependable and boost enough power to meet all of current and future application needs. To date we have had very few issues with the servers.
A word or two more about Dell's suburb OpenManage management server solution is in order. As I briefly touched on above, the utility, which ships with every Dell server, allows to you, the administrator, to completely setup and configure the PE 2650. This is accomplished via three easy-to-use toolsets for setting up, configuring, troubleshooting, and managing the PE 2650. The Server Assistant is a bootable CD with the now familiar wizards that walk you through every step during setup and configuration process allowing you configure the RAID array and then install your OS, as well as load the latest drivers for your server's network cards and RAID controllers. Note: the RAID configuration can also be set during the server’s normal boot routine, but I have it easier and more time efficient to use OpenManage to configure the RAID array.
The second tool the Dell Server Administrator tool which is installed after you install the OS—lets you monitor the server's health, update firmware, and identify all hardware and configuration information via a Web browser interface. Note: the installation of Dell Server Administrator will require the installation of Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), if it is installed on a Microsoft Windows platform.
The third tool is Dell's IT Assistant, a utility that allows you to configure hardware and software across the network from a remote console, or centralized IT Assist server. IT Assist integrates with Dell's ERA (Embedded Remote Access) module, which eliminates the need for an additional Ethernet card or modem for server access.
Using ERA, an administrator can power up/down a remote system, view all 80 sensors in the server, send and receive system alerts, remotely boot the server, and troubleshoot the server with the aid of up to 16 other administrators logged in simultaneously. IT Assist with ERA is a very powerful tool for managing a Dell-centric server farm.
If you are looking for a reliable, (very) versatile, powerful and reasonably priced application server, the small-footprint (2U) Dell PowerEdge 2650 Enterprise-class application server will most certainly fit the bill.
PowerEdge 2650 Features
• Processors: Up to two Intel Xeon processors at 2.0HGz 2.4GHz, 2.8GHz, 3.0GHz and 3.2GHz w/hype-threading support.
• Front Side Bus: 533MHz
• Cache: 512KB L2 and up to 2MB L3.
• Chipset: ServerWorks Grand Champion LE (GC-HE)
• Memory: Up to 12GB DDR ECC SDRAM ; (6) DIMM slots;
• Drive controllers: Embedded dual channel Ultra3 (U160) SCSI/RAID controllers.
• RAID controllers: Embedded PERC4/Di (single channel Ultra320 RAID with 256MB of battery-backed cache); Optional add-in PowerEdge Expandable RAID controller, Version 4, Dual-Channel (PERC 4/DC) with 128MB battery-backed cache
• Drive bays: Standard internal hard drive bays to support up to (5) 1” Ultra160 SCSI hard drives with Dell hot-plug drives. Media bay for 24x IDE CD-ROM or 8x IDE DVD ROM, and 3.5 in. floppy.
• Hard drives: 36GB, 73GB, 146GB, (10,000 rpm) hot-plug Ultra320 SCSI hard drives; 18GB, 36GB, 73GB, (15,000 rpm) hot-plug Ultra320 SCSI hard drives; maximum internal storage up to 730GB (5x146GB).
• I/O Slots: (7) Total; (2) full length, one half length PCI-X slots; 1x64-bit/133MHz and 2x64-bit/133MHz PCI-X;
• Network interface card: (2) Dual Embedded Broadcom Gigabit Base T Adapter
• Power Supplies: Optional 500W hot-plug, redundant.
• Chassis: 2U tower or rack-mountable chassis.
• Video: Integrated ATI Radeon with 16MB SDRAM
Recommended:
Yes
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vemartin
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Member: Vincent
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