SBA * Consulting LTDServers: Brains And Brawn
We put seven workgroup-class file and print servers through their paces
By David Gabel and Sun Ying Tam
Var Business - February 12, 1999
File servers keep any size business--even a small business--humming. For the second in our series of reviews of departmental and small-business computing products, we look at servers that are designed for an environment of 100 desktops or smaller.We contacted WinTel-based server manufacturers that sell through the channel. Those that were able to participate in the review are listed at the top of this page.
IBM Corp. and Acer Inc. did not participate. We expect to be able to review an IBM NetFinity 5000 server, the entry-level machine in the NetFinity line, in the near future. Its review will appear online when completed.
Our review takes place in two parts: print and online. In print, we include our impressions of the three best servers in our overall evaluation. Online, we include this information, plus reviews of the other four servers. The complete report appears at www.varbusiness.com.
The evaluation criteria for this review included construction, expandability, functionality, price/performance ratio, performance and the vendor's VAR program. The latter counted for 30 percent of the score, while price and performance combined counted for 36 percent. The other categories split the final third relatively equally.
We requested servers that contained two Pentium II processors running at 450 MHz, 512 MB of main memory and a RAID 5 array made up of 10,000-rpm LVD SCSI disks of 10-GB capacity or higher. Most of the servers met this specification, although two had 256 MB of main memory.
We were assisted in our evaluation by Wayne Spivak, president of SBA Net Web, a Bellmore, N.Y.-based VAR and Internet consultant. Spivak specializes in small-business/departmental computing and previously has assisted us with our reviews.
