Compaq's high-end ProLiant 8500

Great eight-way performance and serviceability makes it worth the price tag.

By John Bass, Network World Global Test Alliance
Network World, 10/23/00

Review logo The Compaq ProLiant 8500 is a rather pricey enterprise server costing $85,000, but you get what you pay for in that it's a beautifully designed eight-way box that yields the highest performance of any server we have tested. On top of its great performance, this server is a breeze to take apart and reassemble, which gives it an added boost in the serviceability arena.

The ProLiant 8500 comes in a seven rack-space package - an average size for a server this powerful - with the Intel Profusion chipset at its core. When the ProLiant 8500 began shipping in August 1999, it was the first server that used the Profusion architecture. The Profusion chipset has since proven itself as a leader in the symmetric multiprocessing space.

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The latest iteration of the ProLiant 8500 that we tested came with 4G bytes of RAM and eight 700-MHz Pentium III Xeon processors with 2M bytes of cache. Along with the server, we received a Compaq RAID Array 4100 loaded with eight hard drives.

We ran the same performance tests against the Compaq 8500 as with the eight-processor Dell 8450. The difference in processor rates (Compaq's 700 MHz vs. Dell's 550 MHz) and RAM (Compaq's 4G bytes vs. Dell's 2G bytes) pushed the outcome in Compaq's favor. The ProLiant 8500 made a clean sweep of the performance testing, scoring perfect 10s in all performance tests, with the Compaq box yielding a 30% better performance over the Dell 8450 across our Internet and database tests. Dell offers 700-MHz processors in its PowerEdge 8450, but we have not yet tested the performance of that model.

While the Dell 8450 sustained 2.19 transactions/sec in our SQL test against Windows 2000, the ProLiant 8500 completed 2.79 transactions/sec - a 27% increase. The SQL results were similar with Windows NT 4.0.

Our Web tests on NT showed similar performance improvement for the Compaq box, with the ProLiant 8500 handling 80.71 transactions/sec and the Dell 8540 sustaining 63.31 transactions/sec. The Win 2000 Web tests showed a 31% performance increase for the Compaq box over the Dell servers. Compaq achieved 96.16 transactions/sec compared to the 73.41 transactions/sec for the Dell box.

As far as features and flexibility, the ProLiant 8500 has four hot-plug drive slots, 11 64-bit 33-MHz hot-swap PCI slots, with two of those slots supporting 66-MHz PCI cards.

Scorecard

Category ProLiant 8500

Performance
40% 10

Features
30% 8.1

Manageability
20% 7.5

Serviceability
10% 9.2

Our total 8.9

Individual category scores are based on a scale of 1 to 10. Percentages are the weight given each category in determining the total score.
Scoring key:
10 - Can't be better
9-8 - Excellent
7 - Very good
6-5 - Average
4-2 - Needs improvement
1 - Not supported or doesn't work.

As with other Compaq servers we reviewed, the 8500 supports all major network management platforms, including Tivoli, Hewlett-Packard's OpenView, and Computer Associates' Unicenter. Compaq also provides its own proprietary Compaq Insight Manager server management software. As with all Compaq ProLiant servers, the 8500 comes with two CDs that ease the chore of installing an operating system on the server. The first CD contains Smart Start, an easy-to-use installation automation aid; the second CD includes the management and instrumentation software needed to manage the server.

The ProLiant 8500 scored major points for serviceability. It sports a modular, easy-to-disassemble chassis with some basic diagnostic LEDs to help the administrator find the source of hardware problems. The front face of the server has two sets of tabs - one pair that removes the processor and memory board, and the other pair that removes the four-slot drive cage.

The top of the server slides to the front revealing the PCI slots and system fans. The I/O cage housing the PCI slots and system fans can be removed from the rear of the server. Each access point is easy to manipulate, providing easy entry to the server's internals and reducing the downtime in the event of a failure or upgrade.

The ProLiant 8500 was shipped with a Compaq RAID Array 4100 drive enclosure with eight drives. This drive enclosure houses dual active/standby RAID controllers and was attached via a 100M bit/sec Fibre Channel link to the ProLiant 8500. The drives in the RAID Array 4100 were divided into two RAID 0 stri pe sets for data. A hard drive in the server's internal drive cage was installed with the operating system. This drive cage was attached to an Ultra2 RAID controller built into the motherboard. All drives are 9.1G byte Ultra3 rpm drives. The server has two dual-port Fast Ethernet network interface cards for network access.

The hard drives in the internal drive cage in the 8500 are accessible from the front panel of the server. A slimline CD-ROM drive and floppy drive are also accessible from the front panel. The slimmer drives are similar to those found on laptops, which conserves valuable space in the server.

The ProLiant 8500 is a good choice for a Web or database server. One of the more appealing aspects of this server is how easy it is to repair or upgrade - a large consideration for mission-critical applications.

Server testing is performed at North Carolina State University's Centennial Networking Labs (CNL) in Raleigh, N.C. CNL tests networking equipment and network-attached devices for interoperability and performance.