Broadberry CyberServe X55-RS500 review
Asus attempts to take on the might of HP and Dell in the rack server market. Broadberry’s latest CyberServe offers plenty of interesting features but can it cut the mustard against the big boys? We review it to find out.
It provides a smart web interface offering full control over the server so as long as it has power supplied you can switch it on and off, cycle power and reset it. Access controls are particularly good as you can create groups of users and administrators, determine levels of access for each one and use AD authentication as well.
A notable feature is support is provided as standard for full KVM-over-IP control and virtual media. These allow you to remotely control the server, access the BIOS and OS and define devices on the host system as virtual boot media. If you want these features in a Dell, HP or IBM server you have to pay extra as these are considered optional upgrades.
The X55-RS500 delivers a good range of features for the price and Asus has clearly made some significant improvements in a number of key areas. If price is critical then it's well worth considering but if you can afford it we recommend checking out Dell's PowerEdge R610 as we rate this 1U server as the one to beat.
Verdict
The CyberServe X55-RS500 shows clearly that Asus is starting to take its rack servers a lot more seriously. Remote management, expansion and RAID options see significant improvements and although the specification in the review system is basic it does look very good value. The price also includes a full three-year NBD warranty but areas that could be improved are additional support for SFF hard disks and power redundancy.
Chassis: 1U rack CPU: 1 x 2.26GHz E5520 Xeon Memory: 6GB 1066MHz DDR3 Storage: 2 x 500GB Seagate Barracuda ES.2 SATA hard disks in hot-swap carriers RAID: Intel embedded SATA controller Array support: RAID0, 1, 10, 5 (in Windows) Expansion: 2 x PCI-e slots Network: 2 x Gigabit Power: 1 x 600W fixed supply Management: Asus ASMB4 with 10/100
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