CeBIT 2007: Storage & Servers

MSI

MSI was showing off their first quad socket server: the MSI K4-201-A4R3. The Socket-F based Opteron server with a hard to remember name has a 2+1 750W PSU. The server has plenty of expansion possibilities: two PCIe x16 slots (x8 electrically), one PCIe x8 slot, two PCI-X slots (100 MHz), and one PCI slot. The PSUs have been placed in the front of the server to make more room for all these PCI slots and the four CPU sockets on the motherboard. The server makes use of the NVIDIA nForce professional 3600 chipset.


The only thing missing is an internal SAS controller; the internal disk bays only support SATA. A positive is the fact that two USB ports are available on the front of the server.

Fujitsu Siemens

Is a tier one OEM still able to differentiate itself on the hardware aspects of a server? That was the question we asked the people of Fujitsu-Siemens. It is not that easy as x86 servers have become mostly industry standard servers which all use the same chipsets, memory configurations and disk subsystems. Still, there are some subtle differences. For example, the new Primergy RX300 S3 - one of the first servers to make use of the low voltage 50W quad core Xeons - has a very well thought out cooling system.


Three completely separate tunnels cool the (quad core) Xeon CPU, the PSUs and the I/O cards. This results in less noise, less power consumption, and better cooling. The Primergy server is also one of the few servers which actually supports hot-pluggable PCI slots.


Fujitsu Siemens was also very prominently present on Novell's site, demonstrating a "management console" for the Xen Hypervisor which is bundled in SUSE SLES 10. The demo showed how an Apache and Oracle workload was dynamically balanced on several virtual machines.