HP bests Sun in a dual-core server duel

Because the V40z puts its hot-swap power supplies at the back, it has more hot-swap Ultra320 SCSI drive bays in the front -- five, plus one convertible bay that's initially populated by the DVD and floppy drives. However, Sun has provided only a single-channel SCSI controller, and it only supports RAID 1 (mirroring) in hardware. If you want to use hardware-based RAID 5 (striping with redundancy), you'll need to add an accessory RAID controller.

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Architecturally, the V40z is configured with a main logic board with two Opteron processors --and their memory and support chips. There's an accessory board that adds the second pair of processors. This renders the system somewhat less serviceable than the DL585; if the daughter board fails, you can remove it, but if something goes wrong with the main logic board's processors, you're hosed until a replacement arrives.

On the management side, the service processor has already been managed; it's a command-line-based system with its own Fast Ethernet jack, and it's accessed via SSH or through the serial port. There's also a small LCD panel on the front of the server, which can be used to configure the service processor. It's a rudimentary system, especially compared with HP's management system. The V40z also has nothing like the DL585's array of LEDs to assist with fault management. If something goes wrong, you'll need to interrogate the service processor to find out what's amiss -- or call Sun.

One final point about these two servers: operating systems. Hewlett-Packard will install and support Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Red Hat, and Suse Linux. I tested a Windows Server 2003 configuration. Sun will install and support Solaris 10 x64, Red Hat, and Suse Linux. Although Sun says that the V40z will run Windows Server 2003, the company does not install or support it.

With their four dual-core 2.2GHz Opteron processors, both the HP ProLiant DL585 and Sun Fire V40z offer the same primary business benefit: a lot of processing power in a small space. Given that the HP server offers more expandability (except for four instead of five hard drives), a better onboard RAID controller, a better service processor, and more maintainability options for about 10 percent less in price, it's this dual-core shoot-out's overall champion. However, in situations where sheer processor density is important -- such as in clusters -- the smaller size of the Sun Fire would tip the scale in Sun's favor.

Correction:
In this review of dual-core Opteron servers, we overstated the advantages of the HP ProLiant DL585 versus the Sun Fire V40z. The HP server is not necessarily more reliable, but provides better monitoring capabilities for ensuring high availability. We also misstated the model name of a Sun server we previously reviewed; the previous review was an evaluation of the Sun Fire V20z. Also, we misreported the HP ProLiant DL585's maximum memory. The text has been corrected.