Fujitsu Primergy TX120 S3 review

In a world of bland black cubes, Fujitsu’s Primergy TX120 S3 stands out. This entry-level server is the size of a small desktop PC and runs almost silently, yet it’s packed with plenty of server-specific features.

The slimline unit can be placed flat on a desk, or upright using the pair of adjustable stands. For security, the front panels can be key-locked shut, blocking access to the front ports, disk drives, power switch and expansion bay.

The TX120 S3 squeezes a lot into a chassis less than 100mm thick. It supports Intel’s Xeon E3 processors, with five options to choose from. The price above includes a 3.3GHz E3-1240, but Fujitsu also offers lower cost Pentium G620, Celeron G530 and Core i3-equipped models.

The base model has room for two internal cold-swap LFF SATA hard disks, but this review system came supplied with the quad-drive SFF hot-swap bay option. This cage supports SATA or SAS hard disks, but must be ordered with the system since it isn’t a field upgrade. For SATA drives you can cable the backplane to the embedded SATA port, where the C202 chipset supports mirrors and stripes.

The review system came with a pair of 300GB 6Gbits/sec SAS SFF drives and the optional LSI PCI Express RAID card, which adds RAID5 and 6. There’s room for more: even with the LSI card in residence, you have two spare PCI Express slots and a 32-bit PCI slot.

The hot-swap cage doesn’t take up much room at the front, and along with the low-profile DVD-RW drive there’s a spare 3.5in bay. This can take an extra backup device; Fujitsu offers USB DAT tape or RDX drive options.

At the top of the front panel, you’ll find a power button, a pair of USB ports and a status LED panel. This provides visual cues to network and hard disk activity, system errors and problems with critical components.

As you’d expect, it’s a tad cramped inside, but we had no difficulty accessing the important bits. To make this easier, the front section can be swung backwards away from the motherboard.

On the drive bay sits a cooling fan; on the processor an active heatsink; and there’s another fan at the back, behind the four memory sockets. These barely raise a peep: from around 2ft away, all you hear is a faint hum.

It has ten USB 2 ports – six at the back, two behind the front cover and two internal USB headers. The server’s BIOS considers these three separate groups, so you could disable all external ports, or shut down the rear ports and allow only the front ones to be used by a key holder.

Most entry-level servers have only one network port, but here you get a double helping of Gigabit Ethernet. The standard Intel driver software supports adapter teaming, so they can be placed in a fault-tolerant or load-balanced group if required.

The server has a small 250W cold-swap supply, and delivered low readings in our power tests. With Windows Server 2008 R2 in idle it pulled only 35W; under pressure from SiSoft Sandra this peaked at 109W.

The icing on the cake is remote management, as the server comes with Fujitsu’s embedded iRMC S3 controller. This provides full remote web access via a dedicated Ethernet port at the rear. This puts it on a par with the A-Listed HP ProLiant ML110 G7, as it’s a similar feature set to HP’s iLO 3 controller. The iRMC S3 web interface provides masses of information about critical components, and the advanced upgrade activates full KVM over IP remote control and virtual media services.

You’re also provided with Fujitsu’s ServerView Suite software, which provides even more system monitoring facilities. After installing an agent, you can view all components, run hardware inventory reports and link errors or problems with alarms and notifications.

All things considered, the TX120 S3 is an impressive little server that packs a lot into its minuscule chassis. Storage options are good, remote management is up with the best and it’s as quiet as a mouse.

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