Dell PowerEdge R210 review

In the drive for greater energy efficiency, the low-profile rack server is proving to be a valuable ally. We’ve seen an increasing number of these products over the past few months and now Dell wants a piece of the action.

The successor to the PowerEdge R200, the latest R210 entry-level rack server targets SMBs with limited rack space, and claims to have the smallest energy footprint of any PowerEdge server. The most significant feature is that the R210 delivers support for Intel’s latest “Lynnfield” Xeon 3400 processors.

There are major changes in chassis depth with the R200 stretching back 21.5in, whereas the R210 reduces this to only 15.5in. The R210 also uses a smaller 250W power supply as opposed to the 345W power supply of the R200.

Most of the front panel acts as a grille to improve airflow, but it also sports Dell’s four-pack LED diagnostics display, a pair of USB ports and a DVD drive. The LCD control panel isn’t an option for the R210, and if you want the new gun-metal bezel it will cost you an extra £12.

Storage options haven’t changed. Both the R200 and R210 support a maximum of two 3.5in SAS or SATA drives. If you want better storage and RAID array choices then check out Broadberry’s CyberServe X34-RS100, which supports up to four 2.5in SFF hard disks.

The base system uses the embedded SATA controller, which includes Dell’s PERC S100 RAID software solution that can be activated from the BIOS to provide support for mirrors or stripes. There’s also the PERC S300 firmware upgrade that brings in support for SAS drives. It adds RAID5, although for the R210 this is largely academic.

An unusual feature for a rack server is the eSATA port snuggling in between the USB and video ports at the rear, which offers some useful external storage expansion options. If you don’t want to use it the port can be disabled in the server’s BIOS.

Internally, everything is tidy, with easy access provided for both hard disk carriers. The processor is located in the centre of the motherboard and mounted with a solid passive heatsink. Four DIMM sockets sit to one side and support up to 16GB of UDIMM memory.

There’s plenty of room for expansion, since the single riser card at the rear supports a half-height, half-length PCI Express card. Should you wish to use the R210 as a virtualisation platform, you’ll find an internal USB port for booting the server with an embedded hypervisor. A rack-mounting kit doesn’t come as standard, though, and the rails will cost an additional £29.

System cooling is handled via three small fans located in front of the motherboard. Unfortunately, the R210 takes the award for being the noisiest low-profile rack server we’ve yet had in the labs: the fans refused to drop below around 8,500rpm. We adjusted the BIOS power-management settings, but even using the custom option for minimum power across the board, we couldn’t get them to shut up.

If you can cope with the noise you’ll find the R210 easy on the power supply. Connected to our inline meter, it drew a modest 37W with Windows Server 2008 in idle and 108W with SiSoft Sandra pushing the four processor cores.

Management is a cut above the rest, as you have the option of fitting an iDRAC6 Express or Enterprise controller with both bringing the Lifecycle Controller into play. This delivers Dell’s UEFI (unified extensible firmware interface) environment, which offers OS deployment wizards, a driver store, diagnostics and server update tools.

The Express card snaps into a dedicated slot and shares remote management access with the first Gigabit port. You can use a browser to monitor critical components, see just how fast those fans are running, and control the power supply where you can switch it on and off, recycle power or gracefully close the OS down.

The Enterprise version fits into a different slot on the motherboard and provides a dedicated management port plus KVM over IP remote control and virtual media services. It has a V-Flash media slot and, when an SD card is inserted, it appears as a boot option and can also be accessed from the host OS.

The R210 also comes with Dell Management Console software, which provides general network systems management. Based on Symantec’s Altiris Notification Server, this provides enhanced inventory, system monitoring, remote management capabilities and extensive alerting facilities.

The PowerEdge R210 scores well for value. It’s easy on the power supply and offers plenty of remote management options, but the high noise levels make it a poor choice for a small office.

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