Buyer’s guide to rack servers
Affordable, space-saving rack-mount servers still have a key role to play for small businesses. Dave Mitchell explains what to look for and puts four models to the test
Affordable, space-saving rack-mount servers still have a key role to play in small businesses. Dave Mitchell explains what to look for and puts four models to the test.
The past few years have seen a concerted shift to the cloud – and the pandemic has only accelerated that. But as the glamour of a new working model wears off, some businesses are finding that hosted services can be inflexible – and more expensive than they’d bargained for. While the initial investment in on-premises hardware can be high, day-to-day running costs are negligible compared to cloud services, and you get total control over your own data and processes.
Many companies are, therefore, looking to reinvest in local server hardware or even to splash out on their first server. Whichever boat you’re in, rack-mount models are an appealing choice: they pack in all the power and storage a small business is likely to need, while taking up a minimum of space. Some are small enough to slip into a wall-mount enclosure. Even within larger organisations, rack-mount designs are a practical way to deploy on-site services to subsidiary offices.
This month, we’ve rounded up affordable rack servers from four big names: Broadberry Data Systems,
Dell EMC, Fujitsu and HPE. We review their features and put each one through their paces in the lab to help you make the right buying decision.
Metal guru
Once you’ve decided to buy a rack server, the next question is which processor you should go for. There’s an enormous range to choose from and if you pick one that’s too lightweight, it could hold back your whole company – whereas if you aim for the top of the range you’ll be paying a considerable premium for power you probably don’t need.
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution – it all comes down to your current and future workload plans. However, we generally recommend that those on tight budgets consider Intel’s family of Xeon E-2200 CPUs, which are designed for single-socket, entry-level servers. Just ignore the “G” models because these come with embedded graphics processors – potentially useful for workstations, but pointless for a server.
Businesses seeking a more flexible solution can step up to Intel’s Xeon Scalable CPUs. This huge family supports single and dual-socket servers, and to help you differentiate between the features and capabilities of different chips, they’re divided into Bronze,
Silver, Gold and Platinum ranges. For moderate workloads, we’d recommend the Bronze 3200 and Silver 4200 range because they’re reasonably priced, come with between six and 12 cores and support memory capacities of up to 1TB.
Another option is AMD’s EPYC 7002 CPUs, but these are overkill for most small businesses: their huge core densities and massive memory support are better suited to data centre workloads. If you want AMD in the driving seat, consider the lower-cost P-series chips, such as the eight-core 7232P, which are designed for single-socket servers.
Remote control
Almost as important as performance are monitoring and management features, so your support staff can track your server’s health and keep it running reliably. Most rack servers have controllers embedded into their motherboards, which provide a remote web console showing the live status of critical components.
The features on offer vary across vendors. The blue chips generally offer the best monitoring services, but they tend to withhold full OS remote control and virtual media services as chargeable upgrades, while most “white box” manufacturers such as Asus include them as standard.
For maximum security, look for a server with a dedicated management port so this traffic can be separated from general data services. Whether you have a separate port or not, access controls need to be extremely strict, as the controllers provide high levels of access to the server and OS. Change the default administrative password immediately and, if possible, integrate authentication with external services such as Active Directory.
Store room
Most 1U rack servers support up to four large form factor (LFF) or eight small form factor (SFF) drives, while some even have room for ten SFF drives. That gives you a fair amount of room to expand, but it’s a good idea to think about your future needs when specifying your server to minimise the need for costly upgrades and unnecessary downtime. If high storage density is a key requirement, consider a 2U model as these can support as many as 26 SFF drives.
In all cases, mechanical SATA drives are a good choice fo r entrylevel servers. They offer an unbeatable price/capacity ratio and can be had in sizes up to a whopping 18TB. You may, however, choose to complement your main storage with a couple of high-performance mirrored SSDs to run your OS from. Some servers offer
“Access controls need to be strict, as management controllers provide high levels of access to the server and OS”
dual M.2 SSD slots on their motherboard for just this purpose, allowing you to achieve top OS performance while leaving all the main drive bays available for data.
If you’re buying from a blue chip, note that some may require you to use only disks supplied by them – at a premium price – or lose your warranty coverage. Independents such as Broadberry Data Systems allow you to freely buy and fit your own hard disks.
Safe as houses
Just as RAID provides protection against disk failures, it may be wise to fit a dual power supply so that if one unit fails, the second will keep the server running. We also recommend investing in an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) to keep your data safe and allow the server to shut down cleanly if there’s a power spike or outage. There are plenty of affordable models suitable for small businesses: APC ( apc.com) has a useful selector tool on its website.
While RAID and power redundancy can protect you from hardware disasters, remember that they aren’t backup solutions. Get a proper backup strategy running right from the outset – there are a wealth of small business backup products available and for further guidance, check out our A-List on p19.
Selecting the right rack server needn’t be a challenge. The four models reviewed on the following pages provide everything you need to get started. We’ve chosen them to suit different budgets and requirements so read on to see which is the best fit for your growing business.