Fujitsu Server Primergy RX1330 M4
A beautifully designed and affordable Xeon E rack server, with room to grow and low power usage
SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £1,476 exc VAT from kikatek.com
Fujitsu’s Primergy servers have always prioritised energy efficiency and, of the four servers on test this month, the RX1330 M4 boasted by far the lowest power consumption. Sitting idle it sipped just 18W from the mains, and even with its 3.3GHz quad-core Xeon E-2124 processor under maximum load, its power demands never topped 70W.
This is largely thanks to the Cool-safe chassis; its air grilles and channels are tailor-made to maximise airflow. This lets the fans run more slowly, meaning they consume less power – and it keeps the noise down, with the SPLnFFT iOS app measuring only 37.2dB at one metre away. That’s perfect for small offices that don’t want to shell out for a soundproof cabinet.
Knowing this, it’s no surprise that lifting the lid reveals a very clean and
uncluttered interior. The CPU and four DIMM slots are covered by a small plastic air shroud, and cooling is handled by a bank of five hot-swap dual-rotor fans located in front.
At the rear of the case you’ll see a 450W hotplug PSU, and here the RX1330 M4 has another trick up its sleeve: you can either add a second redundant PSU or install an internal battery backup module. Costing £315, this does away with the need for a standalone UPS; if the power goes out for more than four minutes, the Windows-based software will step in and shut the server down cleanly.
For storage, our test model came with four LFF bays, two of them populated with 960GB SFF SSDs connected to a PRAID EP400i PCIe card. This supports SAS3, as well as SATA, and can manage both RAID5 and 6 arrays; there’s also a cheaper cold-swap option that uses the C246 chipset to handle simple mirrors and stripes managed in software.
For those needing more drives, Fujitsu offers variants with eight and ten hot-swap SFF bays, the latter of which supports up to four PCIe NVMe
“You can add a second PSU, or install an internal battery backup module, which does away with the need for a standalone UPS”
SSDs as well (although this requires a PRAID EP540i or EP580i RAID controller). M.2 hasn’t been forgotten, either: the board has dual embedded slots, although note that one of these only supports SATA modules, while the other can handle both SATA and NVMe drives.
There’s even a microSD card slot, which the optional embedded Lifecycle Management (eLCM) tool uses to store OS images and server updates. Add on Fujitsu’s dual-microSD 64GB enterprise card for £120 and you can also run an embedded hypervisor. For further expansion options, PCIe is at your service; even with the EP400i RAID card installed, two low-profile slots remain up for grabs, making it easy to supplement the dual embedded Gigabit Ethernet ports.
There’s also a third Ethernet port, which is dedicated to Fujitsu’s iRMC S5 management controller. This presents an informative web console with plenty of information about critical components, along with everything you need to know about power consumption. The ageing ServerView systems management suite is looking well past its prime, however, and while Fujitsu offers its Infrastructure Manager (ISM) free of charge, it won’t work with this server as it’s only compatible with Fujitsu’s next-generation M5 hardware. The other gotcha is that to enable video redirection for OS remote control and virtual media services, you’ll need an Advanced iRMC licence, costing an extra £230.
Those gripes aside, the Primergy RX1330 M4 is ideal for offices with an eye on the environment. It offers a powerful hardware package at a great price, while its smart internal design keeps energy consumption and noise to an absolute minimum.
1U rack chassis 3.3GHz quad-core Xeon E-2124 16GB 2,667MHz DDR4 ECC (max 64GB) Intel C246 Fujitsu PRAID EP400i supports RAID0, 1, 10, 5, 6 2 x 960GB SATA SSDs (max 4 LFF/10 SFF) 2 x M.2 SSD slots 3 x PCIe 3 2 x Gigabit Ethernet 450W hotplug PSU (max 2) Fujitsu iRMC S5 Standard with Gigabit Ethernet 3yr on-site NBD warranty power consumption: 18W idle, 70W peak