***Bottom-Line***: If you are looking for a stand-a-lone reliable, versatile, powerful and reasonably priced file or application server, (5U), (Tower) ***Dell PowerEdge T710*** server will most certainly fit the bill. The branch server; they are as ubiquitous now as the cash register in our business. They are most often stuck in a back room, or worse a closet with poor ventilation, lighting, and space. The branch server is often overlooked and overworked, and yet it is as vital to any operation as a well pampered Network Operations Center (NOC) server. The business I work for has a multitude of branch servers scattered throughout the Chicagoland area. I have worked with all manner of server(s) from all of the major server vendors; *IBM, Compaq, Hewlett Packard, and Dell*, and all offer a variety of servers to fit individual needs, but Dell seems to offer the largest variety of multi-purpose server, including the new, flexible, 5U Tower workhorse, the really cool looking ***PowerEdge T710. *** Dell designed the ***PE T710*** for high-availability, 24/7 network operations. The 5U free standing tower and rack mountable server was designed with for the virtualized environment and as such that can be fitted with up to (16) 2.5" (SAS or SATA II) hard drives and embedded hypervisors (Microsoft Hyper-V, or VMWare ESXi). The ***PE T710 ***also features dual Intel Xeon 5500 and 5600 series processors with Six-Core and Quad-Core functionality. The ***PE T710*** is well suited for computing and memory-intensive applications, such as databases and web-based application like Microsoft's SharePoint Portal Server, but is scalable enough to operate as a everyday file and print server, which is how we utilize them. The split backplane design incorporated into the ***PE T710*** offers considerable configuration flexibility. For instance, you can configure different RAID configurations; e.g. two hard drives set up for RAID (1) to mirror the operating system for redundancy; and RAID (5) for the remaining six drives, or chose five drives and use one as a universal hot spare. Furthermore, the ***PE T710's*** up-to (16) hot-plug SAS or SATA II hard drives allow up to 8TB of internal storage if (16) 2.5" 500GB SATA II drives are used. My Viewpoint If you are looking for a stand-a-lone reliable, (very) versatile, powerful and reasonably priced file or application server, the large-footprint (5U), free standing (Tower) ***Dell PowerEdge T710*** Enterprise-class server will most certainly fit the bill.  

TheBard

Aurora, IL