Hardware
Our hardware coverage at Windows IT Pro runs the gamut from high-end
server powerhouses to the tiniest of useful USB storage gadgets, and when I peruse that coverage, how can I help but notice the way one monstrous server
towers over everything? If you're seeking a true workhorse for a demanding environment, I can think of no higher endorsement than this: "The HP ProLiant DL585
is the fastest system I've ever tested." So says Michael Otey, senior technical editor
at Windows IT Pro, and reviewer of the system for our July 2006 issue. I spoke
to him recently about his testing of the system. "This DL585 was one of the first
dual-core Opteron servers to hit the market, and it provides simply awesome performance," he said.
The 132-pound, 4U rack-mounted machine that he tested included four AMD 880 Opteron dual-core 2.4GHz CPUs, 2GB of RAM, and a battery-backed
embedded Ultra3 Smart Array 5i drive connected to four 36GB, 15,000rpm hard disks. The system supports a maximum of 128GB of RAM. You can purchase the DL585 with 32-bit Windows Server 2003
Standard Edition or Enterprise Edition, or with 64-bit Windows 2003 Standard or Enterprise x64 Edition. The DL585 comes
with HP Systems Insight Manager and Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) management technology. Insight Manager monitors the
system, letting you manage it remotely or interactively. The iLO technology enables remote management using virtual KVM
over IP through an embedded Web server.
The dual-core DL585 can provide a significant benefit on processor-intensive workloads. During his testing, Michael had trouble creating a workload that would stress the system. "It's note-worthy that
Microsoft's recent top TPC-H benchmarks were accomplished using
the DL585," he said. The use of HyperTransport technology, which
speeds communication between integrated circuits, is one of the
main factors in the system's astonishing performance.
Michael concluded, "For the enterprise, one of the really nice
features is that this system is also socket-compatible with AMD's
next generation of quad-core processors. Therefore, you can do
an in-place upgrade, moving from dual-core to quad-core—getting
an instant boost in processing power—and all you have to do is
swap the chips and upgrade the BIOS."
—Jason Bovberg
See Associated Figure
Interoperability
Heroix Longitude is monitoring and
reporting software for heterogeneous environments. It runs on multiple Windows and UNIX/Linux platforms and can
be used to monitor application servers;
Web servers such as Microsoft IIS and
Apache; databases such as Microsoft SQL
Server, MySQL AB's MySQL, and Oracle;
Microsoft Exchange email servers; J2EE
servers; and various network devices.
Bret Moeller, CIO of Bunker Hill Community College in Boston, has used Longitude for two years. His IT environment
consists mostly of Microsoft products but includes Sun Microsystems and
Apple equipment. He monitors approximately 50 servers and 70 devices (e.g.,
switches, routers, firewalls)—all on a 24x7
basis. Before switching to Longitude, the
college's previous monitoring solution, according to Bret, "wasn't dependable
[and] failed miserably. We didn't get paged.
I didn't know about servers not being
operational." But he's very happy with
Longitude, "even when I get pages at two
o'clock in the morning saying the server
is down." He appreciates the software's dependability, and he says he's had no
major problems with the product.
In addition to Longitude's dependability,
Bret also praises the product's reporting capabilities. The software provides
graphical reports that show the total hours
of server uptime and downtime, as well
as percentages. Bret says he runs these
reports for his weekly meetings with the
college president, and he uses them as an
internal marketing tool to tout his servers'
uptime. "Everybody seems to think that an
hour of downtime is so bad, but [Longitude] plainly shows that [we've had] 99.9
percent uptime, and that one hour in the
scheme of things isn't all that bad."
In general, Bret says that Longitude
makes his IT department look good
because if there's a problem, they can nip
it in the bud. He therefore gives the product a five-star recommendation.
—Lavon Peters