have a number of rackmount machines of various sorts in service at the

moment and, based on the relatively low load on them, am interested in

finding equipment that is more optimal from the environmental /

consumption point of view.
machines that are currently in use are a smattering of dell, hp, sun and

via c3 / c7 rigs. it is hard not to notice the substantial noise, power

draw and heat that comes from the dell and hp rackmount systems and i

would like to see if better rackmount server choices exist that satisfy

the following criteria:
- fast disks with hardware raid, i.e. u320 or sas, that are

hotswappable; am willing to accept SATAII if other criteria work

- non-i386 architecture; expect amd64 is the next best for cost

- decent processor speed and single core; these will be mailservers,

webservers, asterisk servers, etc, that aren't sufficiently loaded to

make processor speed a serious performance bottleneck

- low power draw / heat signature

- low noise

- 1U or 2U size
the via c3 / c7 systems definitely do the trick for simple stuff like

firewalls that don't require quick or redundant disks. my experience

also indicates that you can certainly fully load the processor of a via

c3 system and lag it pretty badly.
i look forward to suggestions :)
cheers,

jake

Hello Jacob,
I might be missing something, but is anything stopping you from

consolidating your servers onto a single HP / Dell that you already

have? Or are these all at different customer sites? Depending on your

power and processor usage, you might actually find that a single HP /

Dell uses the same or less power than several 'low power' 1RU servers,

with the advantage that you don't have to buy any more gear.
I read your post to take it that all these boxes are at a single site,

rather than multiple, off site locations.
Otherwise, Intel has just released a new low power Xeon, which is

rated for just 45w if I recall correctly (dual core). Your OEM of

choice will no doubt have some systems configured with these new

processors.
Kind regards,

Timothy.

The first two are almost mutually exclusive with the third.  1U/2U

servers have to move enough air to cool the expected maximum

disk/CPU/RAM combination running at 100% 24/7.  That means lots of small

fans, and small fans are noisy.
If you require 1U and performance isn't a primary requirement, an old HP

DL320 G1 may work.  They're substantially quieter than a DL360 (or

modern 1U boxes) and have a single P3 socket 370.  Newer DL1xx servers

may be quiet as well, but I don't see many of those.

A shop in Belgium offers this machine:

http://www.ahead-it.be/shop/index.asp?LANG=GB&cat=servers&NR=SCS213
Perhaps it may inspire you.
Bye... Nico