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High-Density Servers

A group of high-density servers stacked into a rolling 19-inch rack combines the rough-and-ready mobility of a Jeep with the power of a Sherman tank. But power and mobility aren't enough. A stalwart high-density server also boasts solid management capabilities. A rack of 1,000 servers can easily be overseen by one person using management software to monitor system and environmental status. That means there's no need to hire extra staff to do surveillance on the reset buttons.

High-density servers cost more than similar Windows-based machines, but price doesn't tell the whole story. We did a quick cost analysis showing a standard server drawing 250 watts of power on average, while a density server populated with seven systems drew a mere 300 watts. Along with this reduced power consumption comes a significant savings on air-conditioning costs--you'll spend roughly five times less than you would to cool a conventional stacked server tower arrangement.

If space is at a premium, consider that a single 19-inch rack can hold up to 56 servers in only 18 cubic feet. These savings point up how, in the right setting, it can be less expensive and easier to own high-density servers.

At our Real-World Labs® at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, we tested three high-density servers, all with different configurations: Cubix Corp.'s Density System 1000 uses dual Pentium Pros; ChatCom's ChatPower Plus server is built with a single Pentium II; and Network Engines' P6000 server has dual Pentium IIs. We focused our tests on management capabilities, structural design and quality, serviceability, fault tolerance and performance.

Cubix's Density System 1000 wins our Editor's Choice award for its excellent management software, superior build quality and the fact that it was the only server with a Xeon-class processor configuration. But though the Density System 1000 won this three-way skirmish, it was no cakewalk.