Boston Green Power 2200-T review

If you thought Intel's Atom was only good for netbooks and NAS appliances then think again. Dave Mitchell reviews Boston's Green Power 2200-T to see how it's used these processors to squeeze eight independent server nodes into a 2U rack chassis.

IT Pro Verdict

The Green Power 2200-T finds an innovative use for Intel’s Atom processor and is well suited to running non-critical applications that don’t need a lot of horsepower. Cramming eight servers into a 2U chassis gives it a high rack density, the cost per node is very low and data centres that have maxed out their utility supply will appreciate its ridiculously low power consumption.

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Power usage is incredibly low as each node uses less than a 40W light bulb, even when under heavy load.

With one node powered up and the four fans running we saw usage with Windows Server 2008 R2 in idle settling at 89W. With SiSoft Sandra thrashing the Atom processor, usage peaked at only 97W. We then powered up more nodes and took idle and peak measurements as we went.

In idle we saw two, four, six and eight nodes draw a total of 108W, 146W, 195W and 235W and under pressure these figures peaked at 117W, 164W, 216W and 263W. Overall, we were seeing an average power usage per server of only 29W in idle and barely 33W under load which is quite remarkable.

Businesses looking for a high-density compute node solution capable of running low-demand applications will find that the 2200-T fits the bill very nicely. Furthermore, the price for the review system equates to only 699 per server and power usage is incredibly low as each node uses less than a 40W light bulb, even when under heavy load.

So what's our verdict?

Verdict

The Green Power 2200-T finds an innovative use for Intel’s Atom processor and is well suited to running non-critical applications that don’t need a lot of horsepower. Cramming eight servers into a 2U chassis gives it a high rack density, the cost per node is very low and data centres that have maxed out their utility supply will appreciate its ridiculously low power consumption.

Chassis: 2U rack Power: 2 x 720W hot-plug supplies Eight compute nodes each with the following: CPU: 1.83 GHz Intel Atom D525 Memory: 4GB 800MHz non-ECC unbuffered DDR3 Storage: 2 x 500GB Seagate 3Gbit/s SATA SFF hard disks in hot-swap carriers (max. 3 per node) RAID: Intel embedded SATA controller Array support: RAID 0, 1, 10, 5 Network: 2 x Gigabit Ethernet Management: Embedded Supermicro IPMI controller (shares NIC1); Software: Supermicro SuperO Doctor III and IPMI View 2 Warranty: 3yrs on-site next business day

Dave Mitchell
Dave Mitchell

Dave is an IT consultant and freelance journalist specialising in hands-on reviews of computer networking products covering all market sectors from small businesses to enterprises. Founder of Binary Testing Ltd – the UK’s premier independent network testing laboratory - Dave has over 45 years of experience in the IT industry.

Dave has produced many thousands of in-depth business networking product reviews from his lab which have been reproduced globally. Writing for ITPro and its sister title, PC Pro, he covers all areas of business IT infrastructure, including servers, storage, network security, data protection, cloud, infrastructure and services.

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