Tech brief: 1U was never so much fun back in the old days

• By John Breeden II
• Jul 09, 2004

Like most of America, servers are trying to slim down.

The IBM eServer xSeries 306 is an excellent example of good things in small packages. There is a lot of cutting-edge technology packed into a frame that takes up just one unit of space in a server rack. And the price of the xSeries is small as well.

The unit we tested has a 3-GHz Pentium 4 processor and an 800-MHz front side bus. To make things even zippier, there is a 1M L2 cache and 512M of RAM.

But the real stars of the show are the cutting-edge innovations incorporated into the system. It has a Serial ATA drive, which means that installing or uninstalling a hard drive requires no tools. That's pretty spiffy in a single-unit server.

For storage, if RAID is what you crave, IBM's new serveRAID 7e configuration lets you set either RAID 0 or RAID 1 for both Serial ATA drives and SCSI drives. And you can do it without losing a PCI slot. So once again, the xSeries emphasizes functionality and size.

The xSeries 306 we tested was priced at $1,389, about what you would expect to pay for a mid-level client system. At that price, the xSeries is perfect for edge-of-network applications that are not mission-critical but could benefit from a powerful, easily configured and small-footprint server. It would also work as a front-line server if needed, and would be fine for Web applications. Heck, if it had a better video card, I would almost recommend it as a client system.

And consider: At just one unit of space, you can put 42 of them into a standard server rack. As your network needs increase, you can simply buy more and slide them into place. You can have an awful lot of power stuffed into a small space.