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In our fall 1998 Gigabit Ethernet Best-of-Breed lab test (InternetWeek, Nov. 16, 1998), we had the chance to check out more than just the hottest Gigabit Ethernet switches. We also saw the latest Xeon server hardware from both Compaq and Gateway 2000 Inc. Both vendors provided us with their hottest machines, which we were more than happy to look at and review.
Compaq ProLiant 6000
Based on our previous experience with this box, we had nominated it for InternetWeek's 1998 "Coolest of the Cool" award. Just imagine that money is no object and you can have almost every feature and convenience you've ever hoped for in a server. Well, the ProLiant 6000 comes pretty darn close to what you could get.
About the size of a small refrigerator, the ProLiant 6000 can live as a tower- or rack-mount chassis. Inside, the ProLiant 6000's heart is a four-way system configured for Intel's Xeon CPU. Our test machine came with two 400-MHz processors, which are nicely separated from the rest of the internals in a spacious modular design. A single, hot-swap power supply comes standard, but the server can be beefed up with a pair of additional supplies. These supplies not only provide failover but can manage power load sharing in heavily stressed systems.
The CPUs and memory are housed in their own compartment. The expansion bus is located topside, and drives are mounted in one of three possible drive cages. Each cage is capable of holding up to four disk drives. At this time, this works out to well over 210 gigabytes of...