At the beginning of August the FastServers.Net Management team had the opportunity to travel to Austin, TX to meet with DELL. This meeting was to discuss the upcoming new server models and overall, how DELL can better service our existing account. The all-day meeting allowed us to meet various divisions, discuss provisioning of servers, and see what services they had that might benefit our customers.

By the time you read this email the Dell PowerEdge 750 will be replaced with a newer PowerEdge 850. One of the more exciting features on the PowerEdge 850 is the introduction to Dual Core Technology. Dual Core Technology combines two processing units into a single processor chip. This is designed to increase performance and power efficiency compared to single core processors, especially when running multiple applications on a single server. The front side bus remains at 800Mhz, while processor speed will be clocked at 3.2Ghz.

The PowerEdge 850 remains in a 1U casing, meaning the maximum of two (2) drives on the server with the standard 160GB SATA Drive or 250GB SATA Drive. Some upcoming changes to our server lineup will take place during the month of September and as these servers become available to us, the currently offered PowerEdge 750s will be replaced with the updated models.

The Celeron-based PowerEdge 850 will also be available as it replaces the current PowerEdge 750 with an increase from 2.4Ghz to 2.53Ghz. Bus speeds on Celeron-based servers will remain at 533Mhz and overall we don’t expect much performance change from the current PowerEdge 750.

At the time of writing this, the PowerEdge 850s are just starting to ship, meaning we are about 30 days from seeing these specimens arrive at our data center. Dual Core Technology processors will help to provide increased database server performance, enhanced application efficiency, and are designed for the mid-market level server for serious hosting.

Getting a first hand tour of DELL was an impressive experience for all: the factory tour introduced us to how component preparation takes place, capacity management, and overall, the building process for their server fleet. It was a clean, ultra-organized operation that demonstrated the power of a company committed to providing quality webservers. On the second leg of the tour we visited a R&D Lab they called “Shock and Vibe”. During this tour we were introduced to many facets of server testing that take place, including heat, vibration, and other types of potentially extreme conditions that servers are put through. Testing takes place and reports are sent back to engineers for improvements on server builds. We visited a portion of this building that had a room temperature of 120 degrees (F) with a variety of DELL hardware being monitored for performance and stability.

DELL PowerEdge Servers have provided FastServers.Net with a true, enterprise level fleet of hardware to offer our customers, while always providing us the ability to share productive feedback back and forth, in addition to allowing us to see first hand how DELL functions behind the scenes. With our continued relationship with DELL we will be in good hands for years to come. Be on the lookout for the new server models that will be available in September, and if you want to grill our Sales Engineers with technical questions don’t hesitate to email us at sales@fastservers.net. Thank you kindly!