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.
On 28/03/2008, Jacob Yocom-Piatt  wrote:

quoted text
> 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