Eight Dual-Processor Pentium Pro Servers Vie For The Enterprise By Jay Milne and Mike Lee   In the Intel world, you can boil down your server options to three flavors: the uniprocessor, which is best-suited for small- and medium-sized applications and typically used in departmental and workgroup settings; two-way multiprocessor servers, which offer a combination of scalable performance at an affordable price and are often deployed as application servers (where processing power and I/O throughput are two critical ingredients); and four-way multiprocessor servers, which usually cost a premium when loaded and, therefore, are deployed sparingly. To get a better idea of how the second flavor of server stacks up, we tested eight dual-processor 200-MHz Pentium Pro servers from Advanced Logic Research, Amdahl Corp ., Compaq Computer Corp., Dell Computer Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp., Polywell Computers and SAG Electronics. To view the Report card. More Than Speeds and Feeds The relative price/performance of Intel-based servers can be attributed to the commoditization of the components used. With Intel offering its own motherboard and high-performance disk controllers and drives available from a variety of vendors, most anyone can build a server that performs well. But performance tells only half the story. Commoditized servers have their place in the enterprise, but you get what you pay for. Systems from SAG Electronics and Polywell Computers offer good and sometimes excellent performance, as well as a number of features, because those vendors are typically the first to build systems with the latest and greatest components available. However, other business considerations--such as long-term viability of the company, consistency and reliability of components in the system, international support and, most important, first-class service and support--need to be factored in to a purchasing decision. If these issues are important to you, look to the servers from ALR, Amdahl, Compaq, Dell, HP and IBM. On the other hand, if you're looking for a great value, SAG's server may fit the bill. It had the highest throughput in our database read/write test (see "Dual Pentium Pro Servers: How We Tested" on page 94). This can be attributed in part to the server's 10,000 RPM Seagate Software Ultra-Wide SCSI Cheetah h ard disks and American Megatrends Inc. (AMI) RAID controller, configured with 32 MB of cache. The units tested had a lot in common. Each offers at least five Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) slots, supports up to 1 GB of RAM and ships with hot-swappable drives and RAID controllers. All things considered, we gave top honors to the HP NetServer LXe Pro. However , the choice was difficult. Hewlett-Packard Co. NetServer LXe Pro The HP NetServer LXe Pro is in a slightly different class than the other servers tested. Although the LXe Pro (and Amdahl's EnVista Server Model FS) offers greater scalability, it comes with a hefty price tag. But the LXe provides what IT managers are looking for: a balance between scalability, quality and reliability, performance and management. The LXe's performance was fair, with the third-highest transactions per second while maintaining a less th an three-second response time, which can be directly attributed to its disk subsystem. The unit's 4 MB of cache on an AMI RAID controller and 7200 RPM drives hurt it when compared with SAG's system, but it did have the lowest CPU utilization, letting it run other processes that are not disk-intensive. The CPU utilization remained relatively constant, even when the number of users reached 80 and 100. To download an Adobe Acrobat .pdf format version of the Pentium Pro Servers Features charts, click here.

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