Dell Touts New Dual-Core PowerEdge Servers

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

With new dual-core Pentium processors coming out just now and single-core 64-bit Xeon MP processors still not adopted across all server product lines that employ these high-end server chips from Intel, server makers have been filling out their product lines with these new processors. Dell has dutifully rolled out two more servers that use dual-core processors from its sole processor chip partner.

In the middle of July, Dell announced its first dual-core PowerEdge server, and now it has added two more dual-core machines to its line. Because Dell does not support Opteron processors in its server, workstation, or desktop products lines, it has to make do with whatever chip partner Intel can deliver. (Advanced Micro Devices has been pounding on Dell for it to adopt the Opteron in much the same way that rival Hewlett-Packard has done, but Dell has hemmed and hawed and mumbled about how it believes AMD cannot supply its demand for chips.) Sources at AMD say this is hogwash, and that AMD is confident that if Dell wanted to get Opteron chips for servers and workstations, it could easily meet the demand. This is not an issue of supply, but of nerve and spreadsheets. If Dell irks Intel by supporting Opterons, it might lose its favored-nation status with Intel since Dell is the only major server supplier that is dedicated solely to Intel X86 and X64 processors. (If you want an Itanium box--dude, you ain't gonna get a Dell, since the company doesn't really do Itanium, even if it does have a few token boxes in its catalog. So the lovefest between Dell and Intel is not perfect, and moreover, even if HP is selling Opterons, it does sell just about all of the Itanium chips that get sold.)

Dell's initial foray into dual-core servers was the PowerEdge 430, which was redesigned not just to support the "Smithfield" Pentium D processor, but also to have a smaller form factor chassis that allows for more I/O slots. That machine was based on the Intel 7250 chipset, which means it can support the dual-core Pentium D as well as single-core Celeron and Pentium 4 processors, which are, in fact, the default processors on the SC430. In the case of the Pentium 4s, Intel has embedded HyperThreading simultaneous multithreading on the chips, which makes the single-core Pentium 4 look like a dual-threaded chip to operating systems and multithreaded applications. Dell has estimated that a Pentium D running at 3.2 GHz will offer anywhere from 10 to 42 percent more performance on the workloads typical at SMB shops compared to a Pentium 4 chip with HyperThreading. So it may or may not be worth the money to move to the Pentium D.

The two new dual-core servers from Dell are the PowerEdge 830 tower server and the PowerEdge 850 rack-mounted server. Both are single-socket machines that, like the PowerEdge SC430, support Celeron, Pentium, and Pentium D processors. In the case of the PowerEdge 830 and 850, Dell is using 2.53 GHz Celeron, 2.8 GHz or 3.6 GHz Pentium 4 (800 MHz front side bus), or 3 GHz or 3.2 GHz Pentium D processors. The latter has an 800 MHz front side bus, and it is shared by the two cores, so it works out to be 400 MHz per core, and in some ways, that is worse than the Pentium 4. These two servers are based on Intel's new E7230 chipset, however, and this chipset can support the 1.07 GHz front side bus that will be used in future Pentium chips. The chipset supports up to 8 GB of DDR-2 SDRAM (both 533 MHz and 667 MHz memory are supported) and the on-board disk controller supports either SATA or SCSI disk drives. The machine will also support dual-core Celerons, when Intel ships them.

With a single 2.8 GHz/1 MB cache Pentium 4 processor, 1 GB of 533 MHz main memory, a PCI Express non-RAID disk controller with 128 MB of cache, a 160 GB SATA disk, a PowerVault quarter-inch cartridge tape drive, Veritas backup software, and no operating system costs $3,863. With a dual-core Pentium D processor running at 3.6 GHz, 2 GB of main memory (leaving two of the four memory slots open for expansion), the SATA RAID controller with RAID 5 turned on across four 250 GB SATA disks (the maximum drives in the PowerEdge 830 is four), and no tape backup software or tape drive, the PowerEdge 830 costs $5,372. You can add Microsoft's Windows 2003 Server Standard Edition for $799, or a one-year Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES 3 license for $349 or a one-year Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 license for $175. The SLES license is more modern software, and half the price. Why Dell is still shipping RHEL 3 and not shipping RHEL 4 on the PowerEdge 830 is a bit weird. You can also throw on NetWare 6.5 for five users for $799.

The PowerEdge 850 is a single-socket, 1U rack-mounted server. It offers a choice of PCI Express slot risers: one with x4 and x8 PCI Express slots, and a second riser with one x8 and one PCI-X slot. The machine also has two embedded Gigabit Ethernet links (the PowerEdge 830 only has one Gigabit Ethernet port). The base PowerEdge 850 with a single 2.8 GHz/1 MB Pentium 4 chip with 1 GB of main memory, 2 GB of main memory, a dual-channel UltraSCSI 320 controller, a 36 GB disk, and no tape hardware or software costs $2,634. With the same RAID disk controller (which can only be used in RAID 0 striping or RAID 1 mirroring mode since the rack server only has room for two disks), two 250 GB SATA drives, and no operating system costs $4,892. The operating systems cost the same on this box as the PowerEdge 830, but RHEL 4 is available on the PowerEdge 850. Go figure.

(By the way, you may be asking yourself: Why does Dell want to force backup software and a tape drive on tower server buyers as a default on its online store and not on rack-server buyers? The answer is simple--for tower customers, such a machine as the PowerEdge 830 essentially is their data center, while rack server customers usually have many servers and already have tape drives and archiving software. Dell is not trying to pull a fast one, but merely do a cross-sell to SMB customers who ought to have such gear to protect themselves.)

By way of comparison, the PowerEdge SC430 announced in July is a much more modest machine. It supports up to 4 GB of main memory (up 50 percent from the SC420 it replaces). It has three PCI Express slots and two legacy PCI slots. The machine supports up to 500 GB of SATA drives or 600 GB of Ultra320 SCSI drives. While Linux, NetWare, and other operating systems are supported on the machine, Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 is the dominant operating system that will ship on the machine, and Dell expects Microsoft's Small Business Server edition of Windows to be particularly popular. With a 3 GHz Pentium D, 256 MB of main memory, one 40 GB SATA drive, no operating system, and basic service, the PowerEdge SC430 costs $798. In a reasonably heavy configuration--take the 3.2 GHz Pentium D, put in 2 GB of memory, and add two 160 GB SATA disks--the SC430 costs $2,806. This is a lot to pay compared to a PowerEdge SC420. With a 3.6 GHz Pentium 4, 2 GB of memory, and two 160 GB SATA drives, this box only costs $1,905. Look at your workload carefully before you spend the extra $901. It might be wasted money that does nothing but line Michael Dell's pockets.