IBM ServeRAID 6M

Advantages: reliable, customer service,expandable
Disadvantages: price,accessory

...The particular model my company own is an 8648-4AY It comes with: 1x Xeon 3.0GHz/800MHz (2MB L2 Cache), 1x 512MB PC2-3200 ECC DDR2 SDRAM RDIMM, No disks,1x Broadcom NetXtreme 5721 Gigabit Ethernet, 48x-20x IDE CD-ROM , 1x 530W Power Supply, SVGA (16MB) . What we have as accessories are: IBM ServeRAID-6M Ultra320 SCSI Controller( around £500) 3x146.8 GB 10 000 rpm Ultra320 SCSI hard drives( around £300 each) and a Remote Supervisor Adapter II card ( around £300 ). Packaging and User manual: The server comes with a very good package.User manual ( CD)and IBM Director software included. keyboard and mouse included.The user manual is very good and include details about connections,set up and enviromental set-up ( noise generated,heat and cooling requirement) Set-up: For our particular configuration , we had to create the disk... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: good value for money
Disadvantages: non SCSI , non hot swap disk, No DVD writer/reader

...If you need a low-traffic server this is the machine for you, but do not expect miracles.It feature 2-way memory interleaving , and Hyper threading on processor helps, but upgrades are quite pricy, and it is missing a DVD-RW. It features same BIOS standard for x-server family ,and it comes with good documentation and IBM director CD( at least here in UK) Hard disk included is 80Gb ,quite small but it has a fast access rate. ServeRAID 7 controller is a must if you install database, but it come pricy .Support is on fee bases, there are no more the 30 days " up and running" as it used to be .If you run into trouble during installation ( quite common with Serveraid 7 controller) and you phone helpline , you have to pay. On the bright side in case of hardware failure( i burned a Power supply unit, my fault...)you have a technician onsite... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful

Advantages: Quite a fast drive.
Disadvantages: One of the "Deathstar" drives.

...to start complaining about their IBM drives dying. I even had a friend with a 60 GB model whose drive died after only a year. Possibly I'm lucky my drive hasn't died yet, but also there could be a reason for it.... These models of drive, marketed by IBM as "Deskstar", soon earnt the nickname "Deathstar" on many a website. With seemingly many people's replacement drives also dying and people generally getting very annoyed that IBM had turned out rather a dodgy lot of hard disks. A year ago IBM released a firmware update that's supposed to fix the cause of the failures, which was to do with the way the hard drive head idled. The firmware fix simply moves the head around every now and again to prevent the problem (now my hard drive might have survived because it's accessing the disk so often). I'm sure a lot of people don't know... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful