The Proliant DL145 is the first HP server to feature AMD Opteron chips and is designed for use in high-performance computing environments. It can house up to two Opteron processors which, as well as ordinary 32bit x86 applications, can support 64bit programs when loaded with the appropriate software.
Although only 1U high, the DL145 is a large, solid device and not really made for in-situ maintenance. Nor does it feature much redundancy. There's only one power supply and, although well equipped in terms of cooling, none of the fans or hard disks can be hot swapped. On the plus side you get ECC (Error Checking and Correcting) memory and remote management facilities, however the DL145 isn't a good choice for small companies looking for a single-server installation. It's designed for rack-dense server farms and clustered deployment where individual servers are more easily swapped out and fixed when things go wrong.
Inside the case the layout is extremely neat and tidy, which is a good thing when it comes to maintenance. We were impressed with the fixed data bus, which eliminates the need for bulky cables. Apart from a few neatly bound power leads, there are very few wires inside.
The main motherboard has an AMD 8000 series chipset that is surprisingly compact. The Opteron chips fit into sockets on this board with ducting to draw heat away to five cooling fans. You can choose three processor configurations, all of which have 1MB of onboard cache with clock speeds of 1.6, 1.8 and 2.2GHz available. Opteron clock speeds aren't directly comparable with those of Intel's Xeon, due to the different architectures.
Memory is configured in two banks of Dimm slots which can take up to 16GB, although you'd be hard pushed to find an application capable of using all that. PC2700 DDR SD-Ram is used, starting with 1GB or, as on the review server 2GB, fitted as standard, depending on the model. An ATI Rage controller looks after the video interface and, as well as the usual keyboard/mouse ports, there are USB connectors front and rear.
Connectivity is handled by an onboard Broadcom controller which equips the server with two Gigabit Ethernet ports. A separate 10/100 Ethernet interface enables you to connect an independent management network with a separate management processor to provide a remote console and command-line interface even before an OS is installed. The Proliant 100-series management processor is compliant with v1.5 of the Intelligent Platform Management Interface to support a range of industry-standard management tools.
At first, the DL145 doesn't appear that well equipped. There's room for two ATA 100 drives with a modest 7,200rpm spin speed. A 40GB disk comes as standard, but up to 320GB can be specified on a pair of 160GB drives. These can be mirrored for extra redundancy and a SCSI model is planned. However, the internal storage is primarily for the OS while data resides on a storage area network. A 64bit, 133MHz, PCI-X slot enables a suitable San host adapter to be fitted.
The DL145 can be configured with either Windows or Linux, although 64bit support isn't yet available on the former. The server provides a very capable platform, faster and more scalable than Xeon-based equivalents, such as the Proliant DL140 we reviewed in May (see graph), and yet more affordable. For the compute-intensive high-performance and scientific market it's a winner.
Contact: HP 0845 270 4222
www.hp.co.uk
Specifications:
- 1U rackmount chassis
- AMD Opteron (2.2GHz, 1MB cache)
- AMD 8000 chipset
- 2GB PC2700 DDR SD-Ram memory
- Integrated dual-channel Ultra160 SCSI controller
- 3 hot-swap 1in hard disk bays
- 40GB Seagate ATA 100, 7,200rpm drive
- Dual Gigabit Ethernet interfaces
- 1 64bit/133MHz PCI-X expansion slot
- System management processor and interface
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