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.

Open the door to any modern Network Operations Center (NOC) and you will most likely find all manner of rack mounted servers contently humming away within serving up data. 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 servers 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 the 2U workhorse, the Dell PowerEdge 2850 rack mountable server.

The Server

In The Box

• Dell PowerEdge 2850 2U Server
• Installation CD and manuals
• Dell Open Manage software
• Server Drives and Utilities

Dell designed the PE 2850 for high-availability, 24/7 NOC operations. The server features hot-pluggable 15,000-rpm SCSI hard drives, internal cooling fans, power supplies, and memory banks. The PE 2850's dual Nocona-based, (up to) 3.8-GHz Xeon-based motherboard also features the new Lindenhurst (7520) server chipset which allows for memory mirroring. This technology allows you to keep an extra set of memory modules preinstalled in spare memory banks, ready to cut over automatically if the primary set fails; clustering for memory!

The Nocona-based Xeon processor (with 800MHz FSB) has Intel's EM64T technology (64-bit support); for you Red hat Linux fans out there, this Power Edge is for you. But Microsoft Windows fans can take heart; the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2003 is on the street, with full 64-bit memory address spaces and 64-bit native application support. Microsoft offers two versions of Windows in 64-bit: Windows Server 2003 Standard x64 Edition and Windows Server 2003 x64 Enterprise Edition. Also, the long awaited Longhorn is a 64-bit platform.

Like all Dell PowerEdge servers, the PE 2850 has an LCD panel on the front to display messages from the system 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. The PE 2850 we use ship with a PCI/PCI-X card riser chassis, which is easy to remove to allow for additional cards, and locks securely in place. You can configure PE 2850 servers with a PCI Express riser as well.

The PE 2850 2U server supports (2) 64-bit Intel Xeon (single and or dual core) processors with processor clock speeds of up to 3.8GHz with a 800MHz FSB and up to 2MB of L2 level cache. The PE 2850 is capable of housing up to six hot-pluggable, one-inch SCSI Ultra 320 hard drives in sizes ranging from 18GB – 300GB for up to 1.2 TB of storage. Hard drive capacity is broken down by the following: 36GB – 300GB (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 2850 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.

The PE 2850 makes data fault tolerance effortless and affordable by providing an optional high performance embedded (dual-channel) PERC4/Di RAID subsystem that includes 256MB of battery-backed cache which enhances availability. The server can optionally be order with the PERC4/DC embedded RAID adapter with 128MB of battery-backed cache.

Data communications is made easy wit the inclusion of dual embedded Intel Gigabit 82541 Server Adapter’s. However, the PE 2850 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 2850 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 EM64T v3
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Enterprise Server v4

Dell has given the PE 2850 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 Open Manage (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 2850 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 @ 3.8GHz/2MB Level 2 ECC Cache/ 800MHz Bus.
• Memory:
4GB DDR SDRAM 266MHz (4x1GB in four banks).
• Hard Drive Bays:
(5) populated 1” hot-swappable SCSI; total internal storage=1.2TB U320 SCSI
• Hard Drive(s):
5 X 36.3GB 15K RPM Ultra 320 SCSI Hard Drives.
• Hard Drive Controller:
PERC4/Di 256MB (1 Internal Channel / 1 External Channel).
• Floppy Disk Drive:
Floppy Drive,1.44M, TEAC2.
• NIC:
(1) Intel Gigabit 82541 Server Adapter.
• Video: Integrated ATI Radeon with 16MB SDRAM
• CD-ROM Drive:
24X IDE CD-RW Drive for PowerEdge Servers.
• USB Ports: (2) front / (2) rear

Our servers arrived from Dell without a NOS installed; however utilizing Dell’s Open Manage software I am able to install Windows 2003 Server without much of a problem. Open Manage also allows for the configuration of the RAID array; e.g. RAID level 0, 1, 5, 10 & 50. All of our PE 2850’s are configured for RAID Level (1) which holds the OS container, and RAID level (5), which holds the data or application container. Open Manage makes configuring the PE 2850 a fairly painless endeavor; it usually takes less than an hour to completely configure each server and install the Network Operating System (NOS).

The front of the black PE 2850 is taken up mostly by the six 1 inch SCSI drive bays. On top of the drive bays sit the floppy and CD-ROM drives. To the far left of the chassis sit (2) USB ports, 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 long blue status light to the left of the round silver Dell logo. During normal operations the light will remain blue, but if a problem occurs the light will blink red.

The back of the PE 2850 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 700W redundant power supplies.

We have ten PE 2850 servers installed in our NOC and test lab. We use the servers for both production and development installations of Microsoft SQL Servers, for SQL database storage, a role for which they are ideally suited. We also use several for other high processor intense applications such as Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM). However, because the PE 2850 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 15K SCSI hard drives make the PE 2850 a performance star. 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 2850’s in our inventory are 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.

If you are looking for a reliable, (very) versatile, powerful and reasonably priced application server, the small-footprint Dell PowerEdge 2850 Enterprise-class application server will most certainly fit the bill.

PowerEdge 2850 Features

• Processors: Up to two Intel Xeon (single or dual core) processors at 2.8 - 3.8GHz/2MB cache.
• Front Side Bus: 800MHz
• Cache: 2MB L2 and up to 4MB L3 per core.
• Chipset: ServerWorks Grand Champion HE (GC-HE)
• Memory: Up to 16GB DDR ECC SDRAM ; four-way memory interleaving;
• Drive controllers: Embedded dual channel LSI 1030 Ultra3 (U320) SCSI controller.
• 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 (6) 1” Ultra320 SCSI hard drives with Dell hot-plug drives. Media bay for CD-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:
o Riser 1: 2 64-bit/133MHz PCI-X full-height, full-length slots and 1 64-bit/133MHz PCI-X full-height, half-length;
o Riser 2: 1 x8 PCI Express - x8 lane with x8 connector slot, 1 x4 PCI Express x4 lane with x8 connector slot, and 1 64-bit/100MHz PCI-X full-height, half length slot.
• Network interface card: (1) Dual Embedded Intel Gigabit 82541 Server Adapter
• Power Supplies: (2) standard 700W hot-plug, redundant.
• Chassis: 2U tower or rack-mountable chassis.
• Video: Integrated ATI Radeon with 16MB SDRAM


Recommended: Yes