Dell Poweredge 2500 Server Review

Overall 4.00 of 5 (by 1 user)

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Publisher's Circle

TheBard
Aurora, IL

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A dependable, Inexpensive, P-III based starter server

a Network Administrator, a small business consultant, a Dell Server Fan, a IT Professional

Pros

Versatile, Tower design, Plenty of storage capacity

Cons

May not run some of today'sapplications

JUL

2007

I open the door to the computer lab and the air still, dark, and cool rolls like an unseen cloud forcefully through the opening giving rise to goose bumps along the surface of my exposed skin. The hum of the three HVAC cooling units mixes with that of the small cooling fans of over two hundred severs mounted in more than 30 industry standard server racks. The darkness is punctuated by the glow of hundreds of glowing green, yellow, orange, and red lights, some steadily on, some blinking in unison with those of hard drive indicators as data is pulled to and from to the servers. And there in the corner still resting in the boxes they were shipped in are two brand new, virginal Dell PowerEdge 2500 servers, beckoning to me to free them from their cardboard and wood prison...

The Server

Dell designed the PowerEdge 2500 as a replacement for the aging PowerEdge 2400 series of departmental and workgroup servers. The PowerEdge 2500 is a direct replacement for the PowerEdge 2400, while the PowerEdge 2450 was succeeded by the new PowerEdge 2550 rack mount server. The Dell PowerEdge 2500 had a base price of $2,199 with a 700 MHz Pentium III processor. The PowerEdge 2550, meanwhile, had a base price of $2,521. Both models of this server are still available through third party vendors and or OEM's.

Both the PowerEdge 2500 and PowerEdge 2550 servers support dual Intel Pentium III processors with entry-level processor speed of 700 MHz, and high-end processors with clock speeds of up to 1.4GHz. Both the PowerEdge 2500 and 2550 feature ServerWorks' HE-SL chipset that supports three PCI buses (two 64-bit buses and one 32-bit bus), a maximum 4GB of DDR RAM in four slots and embedded dual-channel RAID with battery backup.

The PowerEdge 2500 is capable of housing up to six hot-pluggable, one-inch SCSI Ultra 160 hard drives in sizes ranging from 18.2 GB - 73GB for up to 438GB of storage. The server also features a redundant hot-pluggable cooling fan, an optional hot-pluggable redundant power supply and a new smaller black chassis when compared to the PowerEdge 2400.

I have purchased the PowerEdge 2500's for clients to act primarily as departmental files servers, a role for which they are ideally suited. Actual, real world throughput (file transfers to and from the server), is outstanding. The redundant power supplies and hot swappable 72.2GB 10K (10,000 rpm) Ultra 160 SCSI hard drives make our two PowerEdge 2500's some of the most versatile and reliable servers in our inventory. They are not the top of the performance curve, but they are dependable; since I brought them online some 1.5 years ago, they have yet to drop off-line because of hardware failure.

The addition of the PowerVault 110T DTL-VS80 half-height Tape Backup Unit increases the versatility of the PowerEdge 2500 allowing for independent backup and archiving of vital system and data files. If you are looking for a reliable, versatile, reasonably priced file server, the Dell PowerEdge 2500 departmental and workgroup server will admirably fit the bill.