Let me start by apologizing for the title of this article, as it was my lame attempt at techie humor!  With that out of the way, let’s jump directly into the heart of this article.  Dell has just launched the new PowerEdge 200 (PE R200), not to be confused with the noisy little droid from Star Wars.    With testing within our environment scheduled to be completed by February 1st, 2008, we’re looking at an official kick off for the PE R200 in mid to later this year.

Technical specifications of the Dell PowerEdge R200 as we will be offering it:

Processor:  The R200 will feature a single Quad Core Intel Xeon X3210 2.13 GHz processor with 2×4MB Cache and a 1066 MHz FSB.  In short… raw power!

Memory: The R200 will come standard with 1GB of DDR2 800Mhz of memory.  With 4dimm slots, this machine is capable of supporting up to 8GB of RAM using 4×2GB sticks of DDR2 800Mhz memory.

Hard Drive:  The R200 will be offered as a SATA based machine and can house up to two 3.5” 7200RPM 3Gbps SATA drives.    The drive sizes that will be offered in this machine will be 160GB, 250GB, 500GB, 750GB, and 1TB SATA based drives.

RAID:  With two drives installed, you will have the option of having your drives configured in a RAID 1 or a RAID 0 array.  The R200 features the new, very much improved SAS6iR controller card.

Network Adapter:  As with all of our Dell offerings the R200 will come standard with On-Board Dual Gigabit Network Adapters.

The R200 will be the most powerful single processor machine that FastServers.Net has offered to date.  And it will be offered at a VERY affordable price.   This machine will work great as a single application server, a web server, or even a database server for companies with small to medium sized SQL databases.  Interested in learning more about the R200?  Get in touch with us for more information on this new state-of-the-art server. Call our team at 866-753-3278, or email us at sales@fastservers.net.

In closing, I would like to add that this article was not intended to bash or make R2D2 look bad or weak in any way, shape, or form.  R2D2 is my favorite droid of all time, and I would love to see what he would be capable of running on one the of the new Intel Xeon Quad Core processors the R200 features.  Just think…. It would be like a droid on roids! (And probably a very angry one at that.)

Data Center Expansion in Chicago
By Mark Luptak (mark@fastservers.net)

As of the end of January 2008, FastServers.Net will have allocated additional space in our Chicago facility. Located at 427 S. LaSalle Street, the new space will allow for the company to continue adding additional managed servers and collocation services at an increased pace.

The former Western Union building was constructed in 1919 and significantly renovated in 1999.  The latest space will have increased power and physical capacity, while remaining centrally located. It offers excellent floor loading capacity, multiple electrical feeds from ComEd, and significant riser space for diversity into and within the facility.

FastServers is now offering Chicago solutions that can deliver up to 150 Watts/SF to customers. In addition, the extensive base of communications firms already at the facility, including Savvis, Level (3), Qwest, AT&T, and Cogent, provide an excellent opportunity for content delivery networks to interconnect and directly access carriers and Internet service providers.

Back in 2004, FastServers.Net was approached by AMD (Advanced Micro Processors), to provide an advanced colocation solution to host their online forum (http://forums.amd.com). In only a few weeks, a full scale load balanced cluster solution was deployed including massive servers provided directly from AMD. Ecstatic and enthusiastic about having AMD as a featured client, we decided to take our partnership with AMD to the next level by offering FastServers.Net customers an AMD Dedicated Server solution.

This unique and special setup included both the Barton and Opteron processors and provided a foundation for what became a substantial product in the FastServers.Net line of servers. In addition to the first AMD Dedicated Server solution, they also gave us a price point we couldn’t refuse as well as some performance boosts to enhance the already powerful server setup. As that helped us reach new levels in customer satisfaction and overall quality for FastServers.Net products, we are extremely honored to be listed on the AMD website as an official partner - http://forums.amd.com/partners/.

Moving forward to 2005, FastServers.Net made a huge leap from providing AMD servers to providing 100% Dell PowerEdge servers. Since Dell had been a long time Intel only provider, the AMD offering slowly faded away. We often heard from various Dell Reps and Technical Support Engineers that Dell will never offer AMD based processors due to better pricing from Intel if they used them exclusively.

Things have certainly changed since 2005. About 60 days ago, Dell announced they would have an AMD offering and will be replacing a key server solution from Intel to AMD. What does this mean to FastServers.Net and our customers? Well, we can start offering Dell servers with the AMD processors and continue our indirect two-way relationship. Overall, this is great news and it increases the performance level of our products and offerings. We couldn’t be happier with this announcement.

Also, in late December, 2006, we retired the Dell PowerEdge 1425 and replaced it with the Dell PowerEdge 1435 using AMD Opteron processors. The Dell PowerEdge 1435 is similar to the 1425 model, but with a few exceptions other than using AMD chips. One is the new and improved Dell PowerEdge 1435 requires identical memory for each processor. This translates into the new minimum memory standard being 2GB on the Velocity DX.
To further show how the AMD chip outranks the Intel chip, I found an article by Patrick Thibodeau on Neal Nelson and his comparison tests between AMD and Intel. Patrick’s article states, “Neal Nelson, an independent computer consultant who sees himself as being on a Ralph Nader-like mission, has started running tests that compare the performance of Advanced Micro Devices Inc.’s Opteron processor against Intel Corp.’s Xeon chip. And, according to Nelson, the Opteron delivers twice the throughput of the Intel processor.”   Patrick continues by stating “Nelson said his initial test was limited to two older single-core chips, a 2.4-GHz Opteron and a 2.4-GHz Xeon with Netburst architecture. The Opteron delivered 115% more throughput at peak, he said.”

If you would like to read the entire article by Patrick Thibodeau on Neal Nelson’s AMD vs. Intel testing, visit http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9007541