RAM | Reseller Advocate Magazine: Issue 76

By William Van Winkle

BENCHMARKING CAN DRIVE YOU insane. You’ve probably read review roundups on AnandTech or Tom’s Hardware or [H]ard|OCP with their seemingly endless pages of graphs showing benchmark scores for new products that look so nice and tidy. I’ve written plenty of those roundups over the years, and, without question, motherboard roundups are the worst. I’m not a violent person by any stretch, but I’ve had mobo benchmarking sessions so bad that my wife had to remove the children from the house. Why? Because nobody wants to read about product that’s been out for three months.

Enthusiasts, the people who read those roundups, want to know about boards using chipsets that just went public—the edge that’s bleeding so badly it should lose consciousness. Actually, that’s not such a bad analogy. The reason those reviews were so insufferable was that the chipsets on those boards were all backed by version 1.0 BIOSes, and that’s being generous. I would request a dozen boards from a dozen vendors. Maybe three of them would work and benchmark as they should. Most would either seize up during testing or would be “held up” at customs, which I finally figured out was code for “We’re waiting for a new BIOS that might work.” Editors with deadlines aren’t terribly sympathetic to such details.

Almost without exception, the two board vendors I could always count on to work on launch day were Intel and ASUS. That’s not to say that these two companies didn’t provide BIOS updates after launch that could improve the product. But when these two vendors release a 1.0 board, it’s ready for prime time. There’s no disguising a 0.9x version in order to make sales numbers. The exploding capacitor debacle of a few years ago seemed to leave these two manufacturers untouched. ASUS may have consistently aced Intel by a few percentage points in the final rankings, but nobody ever beats Intel on support, and both brands were bulletproof on the test bench. By no small coincidence, they were also usually among the most expensive.

Now, I’m no enterprise operation. I’m just a busy writer in a paper-strewn office, plus I get these roundup review boards at no charge. But I’ve used enough of these products in my own work systems to know that nothing matters more than stability and dependability. How many reboots does it take over the course of a motherboard’s life before I’ve surpassed in annoyance and lost productivity the $30 or $50 more I might have paid for a better board? I don’t want to admire my motherboard; I don’t want to think about it at all. That’s the whole point, and in that regard I’m very much like an enterprise—or any business. I want the productivity gains or new features but not the potential penalty in complications as bugs are worked out.

Nowhere is this desire more prevalent or important than in the server space. In last month’s cover story, we related an anecdote from Coastline Micro about how the reseller had been forced by the customer’s time window to install racks of cheap 1U machines. Only a few weeks later, those servers were visibly bowing and sagging on their rails. I won’t name names. I will say that the server manufacturer was one of the many East Asian OEM suppliers that make their chief value claims based on price rather than quality.

How do you spot the good versus the bad when neither of them is ugly? After all, I’ve never thought much of Supermicro’s beige server styling, but you sure can’t argue with the quality. Conversely, AIC makes a pretty sexy piece of equipment, especially with those scalloped contours on the hot-swap drive bays. Is it welldesigned?

This company makes a full range of rackmount server and storage SKUs, so over-generalizing is dangerous. However, my eye is drawn to this “new & innivative” [sic] 1.5U form factor that purports to offer the capacity of a 2U in 25% less rack space. AIC’s PDF on the form factor notes: “The ever-increasing CPU speed and consequential thermal issues have always been a challenge in 1U platform. To solve this problem, AIC has designed an innovative 1.5U platform providing superior cooling and expansions over 1U, and storage capacity of a 2U enclosure.”

Right. CPU speed is a problem in 1Us, yes? Well, the Intel SR1560SFHS is a 1U barebones with support for the latest Xeon 5400 processors sitting on 1600 MHz front side buses. So much for that point. How about the storage of a 2U?

When Bare Isn’t the Minimum
For times when a server needs to be built from the most foundational components, Antec’s Take 3 chassis offers plenty of premium features. For better or worse, Antec does not sell or support skateboards or plastic garbage bins.

The AIC 1.5U box boasts four hot-swap 3.5” bays. Impressive. Well, it would be if you ignored the fact that Intel packs 12 such bays into its 2U SSR212MC2 storage server (plus two internal 2.5” drive bays). OK, maybe that’s unfair. Let’s try Supermicro...say, the 6015V unit. This box also takes a pair of quad-core Xeon 5400 chips and raises the Intel 1U’s three hot-swap external bays to a total of four. Wait a minute! Supermicro is offering the same specs as AIC in 1U rather than 1.5? Not quite. Whereas AIC offers a fixed 500W power supply, Supermicro does a 520W and lists the voltages on each rail. Supermicro’s case is also five inches less deep.

Don’t think I’m entirely down on AIC. The company is a paragon of computer manufacturing compared to vendors like Toptom International. Pull up Toptom on Alibaba.com and you’ll find that in addition to server chassis and rack cabinets, Toptom also manufactures dustbins, neoprene goods, and Ripstik Caster surfboards, sold in the States under the Razor brand. This is awesome synergy. You can sell admins Toptom’s server equipment and some surfboards to go relax with at lunch. You can also sell the dustbins in which customers can file their vendor support request paperwork.

All right, enough with picking on companies. The point is that channel resellers don’t have a stuffed quiver of arrows to fire at the big brand competition. You have a few bolts at best. Chief among them is your local touch and support; next is probably your ability to customize. Doing this well requires having a lot of options. For maximum flexibility, you want to be able to pick and choose each part. For example, you may find that Antec’s Take 3 case is the best fit for your customer. The Take 3 features rubber drive grommets—a relatively rare feature in server cases for some odd reason—for quieter and more dependable operation. Thermal containment sectioning and the use of oversized (92mm and 120mm) fans not only keep the chassis cool but quiet. Running in the “low” fan mode, the Take 3 is essentially silent.

All told, Antec has fewer than a dozen server cases. Supermicro, on the other hand, has dozens if not hundreds of server chassis SKUs. The 2U SC828TQ has one variant with a pair (1+1 config) of 1000W, front-mounted redundant power supplies; six hot-swappable 3.5” drive bays; six redundant 80mm internal fans; seven low-profile card slots; and a SAS/ SATA backplane. Those specs actually are impressive, but also note that, in addition to its top-class build quality, Supermicro has made a big push to be the industry leader in power supply efficiency. Even the Take 3’s 450W unit tests out at 68% efficiency—a fairly common number in the server space. Supermicro’s latest power supplies, though, test out at 90% or higher. You have to read the fine print to really get the full quality picture. If the vendor doesn’t provide such fine print, be careful.

While product diversity and breadth of selection is one of Supermicro’s strongest attributes, some might find the catalog overwhelming. Is there a middle ground between too few and too much? You might say that this is the spot Intel tries to occupy, although not everyone would agree.

“When we sit down with value-add distribution, they tell us we don’t carry nearly enough product,” says Intel channel manager Brian Jarvis. “They would like us to expand into a large number of SKUs. Now, that’s not the same request we get when we go meet with volume distribution. And when we look at the broad channel, we often have customers say the inverse, that we carry too many SKUs and they wish we’d simplify things. We know we can’t meet the needs of everyone, so we just have to aim for the middle of the bell curve.”

As I write this, Intel promotes exactly six server chassis on its site: two 1U models, a single 2U, and three 5U/pedestal choices. Alternatively, there are 13 server systems listed and a smattering of storage server systems. Is that too many or not enough for a company of Intel’s size and reputation? Perhaps a few more wouldn’t hurt.

“We cover more of the mainstream server market,” says Jarvis. “We’re not out to cover every single base. We are building new programs to help fill in some of the holes. For example, you’re seeing Tyan motherboards starting to show up on some of our road maps. The reason we’re doing that is we’re filling in some of these gaps that we have no intention of addressing. A typical 1U, 2U rack server, that’s a place we can play. We have two workstation SKUs, and some of our workstation-centric customers have a need for product that doesn’t fall into one of those two categories, so that’s where we’re filling in with some of these other products.”

We’re enthusiastic about this update to Intel’s server lineup because it offers the best of all worlds. Intel fans get a foundation of key barebones SKUs able to meet most needs. Those needing more variety will have Tyan-based options. And no matter which way you lean, every Intel barebones goes through the same rigorous testing and validation. Of all the reasons to buy a server product from Intel or Supermicro instead of a lesser name, validation may be the key factor.

You’re a busy reseller who doesn’t have time to mix and match parts and put them through exhaustive trials. Most often, you want the case, motherboard, storage, networking, and management components to all come from one source that you know and can trust has made sure those parts play nice together. I know from first-hand experience that some resellers say they burn in systems and don’t. It’s obvious from my review benchmarking of 1.0 products that all vendors say they’ve done their homework, fixed the bugs, and delivered a solid part, but only the minority really do.

For your own good and the good of your customers, I hope you’re buying from the quality-minded minority, not the masses who live and die according to having the week’s lowest price.