Advatronix Cirrus 1200: a Storage Server Under Your Desk
by Johan De Gelas on June 6, 2014 5:00 AM ESTComparison
Below we've summarized the most prominent features of the Advatronix Cirrus 1200, the Dell T320, and Fujitsu TX150-S8 in the table below.
| Cirrus 1200 vs Alternatives | |||||||||
| Cirrus 1200 | Dell T320 | Fujitsu TX150-S8 | |||||||
| Server format |
Non-standard cubic tower |
4U rack or tower | 4U rack or tower | ||||||
| Max. processing power |
Quad-core Xeon E3 2.4 GHz |
10-core Xeon E5-2470 at 2.4 GHZ |
8-core Xeon E5-2450 at 2.1 GHz |
||||||
| Max. RAM capacitiy | 32GB | 96GB | 96GB | ||||||
| Max. Raw HD Storage Capacity |
10 x 4TB (+ 2 x 1TB) |
8 x 4TB | 8 x 4TB | ||||||
| Max. Networking capabilities |
2 x 1GbE 2 x 10 GbE (optional) |
2 x 1 GbE quadport GbE (***) |
2 x 1 GbE quadport GbE (***) | ||||||
| Expansion | 1 PCIe 8x slot(*) | 5 PCIe Slots |
5x PCIe 1x PCI |
||||||
|
Best PSU Redundant? |
400W (Gold) yes |
495W (Platinum) yes |
450W (Platinum) yes |
||||||
| Min. idle power consumption (**) | 89W | <70W | 65W | ||||||
| Price (see below) | $5874 | $5983 | No idea | ||||||
(*) Two taken by standard Adaptec RAID card, one free
(**) According to vendor specifications
(***) You can add more ports by using optional NICs
Both Fujitsu and Dell offer more processing power, as the Xeon E5-24xx is able to offer 8 to 10 cores and much larger L3 caches (up to 20MB instead of 8MB). Combine this with the possibility of up to 96GB of RAM (6 x 16GB), and it is clear that the Dell and Fujitsu can be used as virtual host servers. The Cirrus 1200 is much less suitable for that kind of workload.
The Advatronix specs are clearly favorable when it comes to storage and file serving. It offers an optional 10 GbE NIC while the Dell is stuck at quadport 1 GbE. There are fewer limitations when it comes to using 4TB disks than is the case for Dell and Fujitsu. And you can mix the slow and large capacity 3.5" HDs with 2.5" SSDs; Dell and Fujitsu require you to chose between the two.
Price Comparison
Fujitsu goes the IBM way: it is not transparant about pricing and the focus of the company seems to be on the more expensive servers and not on "industry standard" (x86) servers. Unfortunately, were unable to get pricing details.
Dell thankfully does not let us down. For the Dell configuration we took the following options: Xeon E5-2430L (6 cores at 2 GHz, 60W TDP), the chassis with 8 3.5'' drive bays, the PERC H710p RAID controller, 4 x 8GB ECC DIMMs and 8 x 2TB SATA drivers. We used a low power Xeon E5 to be comparable with the Cirrus 1200's low power Xeon E3. The PERC RAID controller was chosen to be in the same league as the Adaptec 71605 of the Cirrus 1200.
We selected the Cirrus 1200—Windows Server 2012 Standard configuration and added 32GB of ECC RAM for Advatronix. You get slightly less processing power, but the Cirrus 1200 offers you a lot more storage instead. You get 10 standard 2TB drives (instead of 8 in Dell) and two 250GB drives for booting the OS. Considering that Dell charges you $324 per 2TB drive, the Cirrus 1200 is competitively priced.
The Cirrus 1200 has fewer expansion slots, but we doubt that will be a show stopper in most small enterprises. That's especially true when you consider that you can add an optional 10 GbE controller, an option that Dell does not offer.
The biggest advantage of the Dell configuration is the dual SD module (limited to a small 2GB) that can be used to host a VMware ESXi , (Citrix) Xen server, (Redhat) KVM, or Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor. As a result, you save a bit on power (about 12W compared to a RAID-1 SATA configuration) and you get a more robust solution than what is possible with SATA disks.
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thomas-hrb - Friday, June 6, 2014 - link
If you looking at storage servers under the desk why not consider something like the DELL VRTX. that at least have a significant advantage in the scalability department. You can start small and re-dimension to many different use cases as you growJohanAnandtech - Friday, June 6, 2014 - link
Good suggestion, although the DELL VRTX is a bit higher in the (pricing) food chain than the servers I described in this article.DanNeely - Friday, June 6, 2014 - link
With room for 4 blades in the enclosure the VRTX is also significantly higher in terms of overall capability. Were you unable to find a server from someone else that was a close match in specifications to the Cirrus 1200? Even if it cost significantly more, I think at least one of comparison systems should've been picked for equivalent capability instead of equivalent pricing.jjeff1 - Friday, June 6, 2014 - link
I'm not sure who would want this server. If you have a large SQL database, you definitly need more memory and better reliability. Same thing if you have a large amount of business data.Dell, HP or IBM could all provide a better box with much better support options. This HP server supports 18 disk slots, 2 12 core CPUs, and 768GB memory.
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/proliant-servers...
It'll cost more, no doubt. But if you have a business that's generating TBs of data, you can afford it.
Jeff7181 - Sunday, June 8, 2014 - link
If you have a large SQL database, or any SQL database, you wouldn't run it on this box. This is a storage server, not a compute server.Gonemad - Friday, June 6, 2014 - link
I've seen U server racks on wheels, with a dark glass and keys locking it, but that was just an empty "wardrobe" where you would put your servers. It was small enough to be pushed around, but with enough real estate to hide a keyboard and monitor in there, like a hypervisor KVM solution. On the plus side, if you ever decided to upgrade, just plop your gear on a real rack unit. It felt less cumbersome than that huge metal box you showed there.Then again, a server that conforms to a rack shape is needed.
Kevin G - Friday, June 6, 2014 - link
Actually I have such a Gator case. It is sold as a portable case for AV hardware but conforms to standard 19" rack mount widths and hole mounts. There is one main gotcha with my unit: it does't provide as much depth as a full rack. I have to use shorter server cases and they tend to be a bit taller. It works out as the cooling systems of taller rack cases tend to be quieter and an advantage when bring them to other locations An more of a personal preference thing but I don't use sliding rails in a portable case as I don't see that as wise for a unit that's going to be frequently moved around and traveling.martixy - Friday, June 6, 2014 - link
Someone explain something to me please.So this is specifically low-power - 500W on spec. Let's say then that it's a non-low-power(e.g. twice - 1kW). I'm gonna assume we're threading on CRAC territory at that point. So why exactly? Why would a high powered gaming rig be able to easily handle that load, even under air cooling, but a server with the same power factor require special cooling equipment with fancy acronyms like CRAC?
alaricljs - Friday, June 6, 2014 - link
A gaming rig isn't going to be pushing that much wattage 24x7. A server is considered a constant load and proper AC calculations even go so far as to consider # of people expected in a room consistently, so a high wattage computer is definitely part of the equation.DanNeely - Friday, June 6, 2014 - link
I suspect it's mostly marketing BS. One box even a high power one that's at a constant 100% load doesn't need special cooling. A CRAC is needed when you've got a data center packed full of servers because they collectively put out enough heat to overwhelm general purpose AC units. (With the rise of virtualization many older data centers capacity has become a thermal limit instead of being limited by the number of racks there's room for.)At the margin they may be saying it was designed with enough cooling to keep temps reasonable in air on the warm side of room temperature instead of only when it's being blasted with chilled air. OTOH a number of companies that have experimented with running their data centers 10 or 20F hotter than traditional have found the cost savings from cooling didn't have any major impact on longevity so...