Pros & Cons
-
- Loads of hardware options.
- Highly flexible configuration.
- Good price.
- Thirty-day money-back guarantee.
-
- Basic management package.
- Very loud.
- Limited modularity.
Aberdeen, the company behind this server for the small-to-midsize business, is itself a smaller-tier value vendor, but it's been around for 16 years and offers certain benefits to SMBs with specific server needs. For one, it will configure a server to almost any specification (even if you're ordering only one): from 1U to 5U, as a general file server, a high-performance storage server, or anything in between, and with a variety of Linux or Windows operating system flavors. That flexibility may interest only SMBs with specific technical needs, but here's something that will interest everyone in the market for a server: The company offers the only five-year server warranty (strictly mail-in, though) I've ever heard of. It also has a program called Aberdeen CARES, which allows customers to purchase a custom-built server, try it out for 30 days, and return it for a full refund if not completely satisfied. Only Sun Microsystems has a similar return offer. And, make no mistake about it, the Aberdeen Stirling 229 I tested is one powerful beast.
This is a 2U rack-mount server, which the company outfitted with a brand-new pair of Intel Xeon quad-core X5842 3.2-GHz CPUs, 4GB of ECC RAM, and four 146GB iSCSI hard drives in a RAID 5 configuration controlled by an LSI PCIe RAID card. If that setup isn't burly enough, though, you install up to 128GB of RAM in the massive bank of 16 DIMM slots and as many as eight iSCSI or SATA hard drives set up in configuration from JBOD to RAID 6.
The 2U case is typical, with an easy-open top and a rail system. Installing it into my APC InfraStruXure test rack wasn't as quick as installing the
The bundled IPMIView management software works with the 229's onboard IPMI 2.0-compliant controller. Administrators load IPMIView onto a Windows workstation on the same network as the server. From there, supervisors can monitor hardware health (including fan speed, temperature, power, and chassis open/close status), set performance and environmental threshold alerts via SNMP, manage an event log, and carry out tasks such as reboots and graceful shutdowns.
Aberdeen has added its own KVM-over-LAN feature—a nice convenience, especially for SMB server administrators who might not have a dedicated KVM. True, you can get a similar feature by using Windows RDP and other remote-control methods. But Aberdeen lets you access the server via the dedicated management Ethernet port, making communication possible even when the system is having trouble. This competes with both Apple's and HP's lights-out remote management and is a useful feature—though the KVM-over-LAN software died twice during testing. I had better luck using a typical IP KVM like the Avocent SwitchView IP I have here in the lab.—
Aberdeen on the Bench
Testing certainly revealed one surprise: I thought the ProLiant a little noisy when I powered it up, but its sound was a kitten mewl compared with the Stirling's wildcat howl. Initially, part of the wail came from an alarm that sounded when I tried to switch the server on with only one power supply; but even after rectifying that, the Aberdeen's three modular fans screamed like a baby on an airplane, earning me glares from the other analysts in the lab until I racked the machine in our separate server room. Bottom line: The 229 may be an SMB server, but your SMB better have a data room or closet with a rack and a closed door or your employees will eventually hang you in the parking lot.
Benchmark test performance, however, quickly counterbalanced any audio annoyance. On Geekbench, the Stirling returned a whopping overall score of 8,498, which breaks down into a screaming 12,007 score on the CPU integer test, 10,257 on floating point, and 2,160 on the memory test. On the file-storage side, the Aberdeen's results on the IOzone tests were equally impressive. On disk writes small enough to use OS and server cache, the Aberdeen managed a fast 1.15 GBps. On writes too large for cache optimization, which started at around the 512MB point, the Stirling 229 averaged a still-speedy 101 MBps of raw throughput. Reads followed a similar trend, with optimized reads averaging a blistering 2.16 GBps, while straight hardware reads came to a more normal 39.8 MBps. (For more on how we test SMB servers, click here.)
Overall, I find the 229 a solid SMB workhorse. The case and innards aren't as elegantly arranged or as systematically engineered as those of our Editors' Choice, the HP ProLiant DL380 G5, partially because Aberdeen wants the 229 to be configurable as anything from an SMB workhorse to a Fibre Channel storage node. On the upside, a 229 configured with newer CPUs, twice the RAM, and twice the hard-drive capacity still costs only a couple of hundred dollars more than the HP. The five-year warranty is a bargain, too, and the 30-day refund offer is also attractive.
Still, the ProLiant is more than expandable enough for most SMBs, and HP's financing options are SMB friendly. But where the ProLiant really pulls ahead is in manageability. The 229 has all the basic management tools, but Aberdeen has a bit of work to do before its software can compare with the HP Insight Manager—and day-to-day management is what it's all about for server administrators, especially those pulling solo duty in an SMB. Bottom line: The Aberdeen Stirling 229 gets an honorable mention for a terrific price and a solid product, but the fit and finish of the HP ProLiant DL380 G5 are enough to give it the edge. I certainly look forward to seeing how the Aberdeen line evolves over time. This is a company to watch and a product to consider when making any SMB server purchase.
Benchmark Test Results
Check out the
More SMB Server Reviews:
Final Thoughts
Aberdeen Stirling 229
The Aberdeen Stirling 229 2U is a hardware Clydesdale with excellent benchmark test numbers, a five-year warranty, and a 30-day money-back guarantee. But while all the management basics are there, this SMB server has a little ways to go in terms of overall polish and day-to-day management.