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Compaq rises to the top of this year's enterse server offerings.
This installment of our server review series shows that enterprise-class machines are getting significantly faster. In fact, all five servers we looked at this time were 10% to 42% faster than our previous top performer. Compaq Computer Corp.'s ProLiant 7000 turned in the best overall score with a reasonable price and consistently high numbers in testing under Windows NT Server 4.0 and Novell, Inc.'s IntrnetWare 4.11. In terms of pure perfomance, Dell Computer Corp.'s PowerEdge 6100/200 squeaked past NeTpower, Inc.'s Sparta to close the year as our Windows NT Server 4.0 speed champion. However, Dell's last-place finish under IntranetWare dropped it to third place in overall performance. That left NeTpower on top of the performance list in a somewhat tainted victory: It was only tested under Windows NT because the vendor lacks IntranetWare support Speed isn't everything, though. Enterprise servers need redundant components, easy maintenance and bundled remote management capabilities. Each server in this roundup satisfies those needs to varying degrees, but Compaq once again came out on top with a highly scalable and easy-to-service unit.
ProLiant 7000
Vendor: Compaq Computer Corp. Contact: (800) 345-1518, www.compaq.com/ products/servers/pl7000/index.html
Getting
its subsystems to work together as a well-oiled machine keeps Compaq at or near the top of our performance charts.
The firm's Netelligent network adapters and Smart-2 Array disk controllers helped the ProLiant 7000 keep up as we incrementally added clients to stress the I/O subsystems.
Our enterprise testing is designed to measure a server's peak performance at the 16-client level and gauge how an additional 16 clients, added in increments of four, slows it down.
The ProLiant 7000 took the second smallest performance hit as we went from 16 to 32 clients. The ProLiant 7000 also was the most consistent performer in that its performance under NT and IntranetWare varied by only a tiny percentage. The unit also took top speed honors in Web server testing, but only by a small margin.
Besides good performance, Compaq provides innovative design. A trapdoor on the top of the server provides access to five hot-plug PCI slots for easy service. Using Compaq's Hot-Plug software to turn off power to an individual slot, you can replace a Iaulty...