Four CPUs aren't always greater than two

I ran tests with the 1142H closely packed between several servers, and drove the system into the red line with continuous MD5 sum calculations for 24 hours. I did not notice any problem with the server’s performance; the 1142H definitely drives like a 4U Opteron system, with plenty of torque and the ability to address large amounts of RAM.

Free IT resource Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) May 22-23, 2007 Sponsored by OSBC Free IT resource TechNet: More ways to know it, share it, and keep it running. Sponsored by Microsoft Appro 1142H Appro, appro.com Fair  6.2 criteria score weight Availability 6 25% Performance 8 20% Scalability 6 20% Management 4 15% Serviceability 6 10% Value 7 10% Cost: Starts at $7,000; fully configured, $22,000 Bottom Line: With four 2,2Ghz Opteron 848 CPUs in a 1U chassis and support for 32GB of RAM, the 1142H packs quite a wallop into a small package. The lack of system management tools shows some immaturity, but Appro has promised to deliver those soon. The 1142H is unquestionably a powerful server, and is best suited for HPC and clustering applications. About our Reviews and Scoring Methodology

That said, the server did manage to raise the temperature in the lab slightly, all by itself. If the 1142H was sitting near the top of a rack full of servers, it would likely get very warm, which generally leads to a shorter operating life. I didn’t see any overt temperature-related system issues in my tests, however.

Fast, but Limited

Available with either an LSI U320 SCSI controller or an SATA controller, the 1142H can handle two disks within the chassis, but does not support hardware RAID. For most tasks that face a four-CPU system, access to data is critical, and so is performance.

Unfortunately, if you want to add hardware RAID support, it must come in the form of an expansion card, which will take up the only available slot. Otherwise, software RAID is possible but will use CPU resources to function.

In the HPC world, the single available PCI slot can handle a Myrinet or Infiniband card if the on-board Gigabit Ethernet controllers aren’t acceptable. For other data-crunching purposes, however, the 1142H is definitely limited by the one PCI slot and the lack of redundant power supplies.

Connectivity to a Fibre Channel SAN is possible but redundant connections are not. Thus, the 1142H isn’t suited to perform as a high-power, stand-alone system.

All this paints the 1142H into the HPC and clustering corner. That’s a lucrative spot, but it also raises the possibility of using blade servers rather than 1U systems. Blade servers won’t have four CPUs, of course, but rack density will compare favorably against 1U servers.

Thus, the justification for the 1142H is specialized tasks that can significantly benefit from parallel tasks run within a cluster node. The lack of redundancy doesn’t matter as much in this environment, as the loss of a single node would be unfortunate but doesn’t represent the failure of specific services.

Appro considers its 4U quad-Opteron system to be the solution for those specialized applications. Given the relatively low price and footprint, the 1142H might make a reasonable lab or QA server, but I wouldn’t place it in a mission-critical, stand-alone position.

The 1142H also lacks management capabilities of any kind, though Appro offers management tools with its blade servers and some of its other server offerings. The company does plan to implement its system management solution on the 1142H, providing remote administration, health monitoring, and alerting.

All in all, four CPUs in a 1U chassis is a very intriguing notion, but like fine wine and ultra-high-end sports cars, they have a very select audience. If that audience is paying attention, then the 1142H will do well.