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Reviews /
Reviews /
Top of the midrange
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Dell's PowerEdge 4300 department server is a good performer and a good value.
Dell's midrange departmental server, the PowerEdge 4300, offers impressive ease of use, performance and flexibility. Its file server performance beats all the workgroup servers we've tested. Priced at $14,103 as tested, the PowerEdge 4300 is a good value with a lot of room inside for future hardware expansion. Dell's server is a good choice for shops that need to start small and grow.
The 4300 scored 9.4 out of a possible 10 for performance.
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Test configuration
The server we tested had two 500-MHz Pentium III processors with 512K bytes of Level 2 cache and 1G byte of RAM. The server came with five 9.1G-byte 10K rpm drives loaded in the eight-slot drive cage. The drive cage was connected to one channel of Dell's four-channel PERC2 PowerEdge Expandable RAID Controller SCSI RAID array. The PERC2 card came with 128M bytes of onboard cache. Two PCI Intel Pro100+ network interface cards (NIC) were loaded in the server for network access. The RAID controller and two NICs occupied three of the six 33-MHz 32-bit PCI slots. Two of the slots are shared PCI/ISA slots. The server came with three load balancing, hot-swappable power supplies that offer 2+1 redundancy. The PowerEdge 4300's motherboard, which uses Intel's 440GX chipset, has two SCSI controllers - an Adaptec 7860 Ultra Narrow SCSI controller, which controlled the server's CD-ROM drive, and an Adaptec 7890 Ultra2 SCSI, which was not used in this configuration because of the presence of the RAID array controller. The five drives were configured into one RAID 0 stripe set. The operating system was installed over one of the two partitions configured across the striped set. All the data for the tests was loaded on the second partition. The two NIC cards were configured for full-duplex, 100M bit/sec operation. The PowerEdge 4300 chassis provides toolless accessibility to all server components. The front bezel exposes the eight-slot hot-pluggable drive cage and has a door hiding the CD-ROM and diskette drives, the two-slot hard drive cage and the power switch. The side of the case can be removed for access to the CPUs, RAM and I/O slots. If you only need to access the I/O slots, a convenient trap door is provided so you don't have to remove the side cover. The 4300 can be rack mounted; the internal media cage can be rotated 90 degrees so the drives are in an upright position and the internals can be accessed from the top.Management software included
The server comes with a Dell Server Assistant CD-ROM. It includes hardware drivers and quick installation aides for NT NetWare, OS/2 Warp and Unix. Also bundled with the server is HP OpenView Network Node Manager/SE, which lets you integrate the PowerEdge 4300 into enterprise OpenView management environments. OpenManage IT Assistant, a Dell graphical user interface-based management system, is also included. Another management product, OpenManage Connections, provides software instrumentation to integrate the PowerEdge server into HP/UX, Microsoft SMS, Tivoli Enterprise Console, Tivoli TME, CA-Unicenter TNG, NNM for Solaris and NetView management platforms. A Windows NT management product called OpenManageX is also bundled with the server. Besides providing great performance for the price, the PowerEdge 4300 offers an easy upgrade path for organizations that want to start small but plan to grow big. Its serviceability and availability features let it grow to higher levels of performance. Scorecard
| Category | Score |
| Overall |
9.5 |
| Performance (40%) |
9.2 |
| Features and flexibility (30%) |
10 |
| Manageability (15%) |
10 |
| Serviceability (10%) |
8 |
NetResults
| Vendor |
Dell Computer Corp. (800) 999-3355 Web site |
| Price | $14,469 |
| Processor type | 500MHz Pentium III, 512K-byte L2 cache |
| # of processors | 2 |
| # of processors supported | 2 |
| Memory configuration | 1G bytes |
| # and type of RAM slots | 4 |
| Expansion slots present |
4 PCI All PCI slots are 32bit 33MHz (not hot-pluggable) 2 PCI/ISA |
| Expansion slots available | 3 PCI |
| Disk controller |
PERC2 4-channel Ultra2 LVD SCSI 128M bytes cache Battery backup Ultra2 LVD SCSI on motherboard UltraNarrow SCSI on motherboard |
| Hard drive description | (5) Seagate 9.1G-byte 10k rpm Ultra2 |
| # and description of hard drive bays |
(8) 1-inch or (6) 1.6-inch hot plug slots 1-channel backplane Single channel cage with (2) 1-inch hot-plug slots |
| Network interface | (2) Intel Pro 100+ Fast Ethernet |
| CD-ROM | NEC UltraNarrow SCSI 14-32X |
| Availability features |
Hot plug redundant power supplies, hard drive and fans Dual processors ECC RAM |
| Manageability features |
Optional remote management card (DRAC2) Integration software for major enterprise management platforms |
| Security features | Locking case, disks, and bezel |
| Bundled software |
Dell Server Assistant Dell OpenManage IT Assistant Dell OpenManageX |
| Warranty |
3 year parts 1 year next business day on site |
Note: Products are ranked on a 1-10 scale in each category, then multiplied by the weight in each category. These are added to give a total score.
RELATED LINKS
Scorecard and NetResults
How we ranked the server in key areas, vendor contact info, product specs.
How we did it
A look at our test methodology.
John Bass is a Senior Technical Staff member of Centennial Networking Labs at North Carolina State University and a member of the Network World Test Alliance
Reach him at jbass@ cnl.ncsu.edu
