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NEC Express5800/ft

When we sent out a call for blade servers, we were on a bit of a fishing trip, seeing what we would reel in. In our invitation, we specified only that we were looking for servers in a blade format. The box NEC sent did come with four "blades," but all are part of a single computer. The two processor blades and two IO blades can be removed/added at any time. If you remove one of each, the computer still runs. Although the device did not meet the criteria for our tests, we decided to dig a little deeper and discovered a cool, albeit pricey, little box.

The NEC Express5800/ft is a 100 percent hardware redundant server using Intel x86 processors. Two of the blades are a set of redundant CPU modules; two are a redundant set of I/O modules that include the hot-swappable hard drives, network connections, and a couple PCI slots. Our system came with a floor-standing chassis, but a rack-mount option is available. The NEC Express5800/ft supports only Windows, but NEC says it plans to support Linux in the future. The previous version of this server does support Linux, if that is needed today.

The CPU modules run in lockstep when both are present. Indicator lights on the front will let you know if hardware fails in either module, and the remaining working module will continue to run. For the disk subsystem, each blade contains a set of disks. Veritas Volume Manager for Windows software is used to keep the two blades in sync. In our tests, we were able to remove both a disk blade and a processor blade, and the system acted as if nothing happened.

If you're trying to achieve that elusive 99.999 percent uptime for a system and worried that a hardware failure will throw a wrench in your plan, the NEC Express5800/ft is worth a look.

NEC Express5800/ft, $29,893 as tested. NEC Corp., (800) 338-9549. www.nec.com