Also similar to the Enterprise X-D, the STF 333-LVD is equipped with hot-swap redundant power supplies. We were disappointed that it only includes four PCI and one ISA slot, as compared to the Enterprise X-D's nine expansion slots and Digital Server 1210's and Gateway NS-7000's six.

The STF 333-LVD's tower configuration provides tremendous expansion space. During testing, adding and removing expansion cards and disk drives was relatively painless. Of the five expansion slots, four were open. One PCI slot was filled with Adaptec's optional Ultra-2 SCSI controller. While four PCI slots and one ISA expansion slot are usually adequate, we would have liked to have seen additional expansion slots.

The SAG server also has room for a whopping 10 drives, providing great expansion potential. Using the current 18.1-GB drives, this server can hold an amazing 181 GB of disk storage!

For server management, the STF 333-LVD comes bundled with Intel's LANDesk Manager 2.8, as does the Tangent system. Like Digital's ServerWorks application, LANDesk is designed to manage not only servers but other devices, such as routers, bridges and print servers on the network via SNMP. While LANDesk is a full-featured network and server management tool, we preferred the look and feel of Gateway's InforManager and HP's TopTool. Keeping it simple is important in the workgroup environment. It takes more time to configure and utilize the LANDesk program than with InforManager or TopTools.

During our testing, LANDesk did not successfully report an insecure chassis. (Both of the server's covers were removed and the front door was open.) When we unplugged two of the fans that blow on the disk drives, no alerts were generated.

We were also a little concerned about the lack of 24x7 support for SAG servers (Tangent's server also lacked this support). The current support hours are 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. SAG was working on providing 24-hour support at press time.

Gateway 2000's Gateway NS-7000
Gateway workstations and servers have been in the marketplace for quite some time, traditionally for the home or small office. The NS-7000 changes all that. Priced at $2,699, it is a well-designed server that performed impressively in our memory tests. It features a very basic but useful server monitoring utility.

The NS-7000 supports up to 512 MB of ECC memory and has seven internal drive bays, which are not hot swappable like those from Tangent or SAG. This unit, like all of the other servers except for the HP E50, can support an additional Pentium II processor. We expect that in most installations a second CPU will not significantly increase overall server application performance. Unless you have specific applications known to be CPU-intensive, your money would be better spent on additional RAM or faster hard disks.

For server management, each NS-7000 server ships with InforManager, a Windows-based program that lets you easily view the server status. InforManager is not as full featured as Digital's ServerWorks or Intel's LANDesk product, but it shows everything you need to see about your server in an easy-to-use and easy-to-install package. You can view hardware status, such as fan, voltage, temperature, memory and CPU information. (In the lab, this server was the only one that detected a fan failure but, like the others, it did not detect an open chassis.) We liked InforManager's ability to send MAPI-based e-mail alerts, pages, network broadcasts or pop-up alerts. There is one nit-pick: While the software indicates when the CPU is busy, it does not display the actual CPU utilization, but a figure of a person running. That's cute, but not very practical.

We really liked the NS-7000's expandability options. In our test configuration, six of the seven expansion slots and six drive bays were open, and yet the server is quite compact. This server was the only one with EISA slots. Since almost all third-party adapters are PCI, we feel it would make more sense to eliminate the EISA slots and add more PCI slots. As for fault-tolerance features, this server is not so complete.

Digital Equipment Corp. Digital Server 1210
The Digital Server 1210 is a competent server that displays useful features, but it did not excel in any particular area. Priced in the middle of the pack at $3,731, the 1210 is good to deploy if you use the Digital line of PC servers and want to stay consistent.