Two Cents: Tower of Power

The Gateway E-9220T is a low-cost, entry-level server designed for small businesses, workgroups and branch offices. Its features include dual-core technology, BTX chassis, RAID 5 functionality and redundant power capabilities.

We had our IT staff install Windows Server 2003 on the Gateway server and provision it as our temporary print server, BlackBerry server and dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) server.

This model came with an Intel Pentium D 820 2.8 GHz processor. Memory starts at 256 MB and is expandable to 8 GB.

We previously used a Dell PowerEdge 2400 with a single Pentium 3 533 MHz processor and 1 GB of RAM for these functions.

We have 150 total users on the network, of which 18 tote BlackBerries and three work remotely. Hardware-wise, the network supports 25 printers and three digital color copiers.

Needless to say, the Gateway server blew our previous server out of the water. Users connected to printers and activated BlackBerries in about half the time, and retrieved IP addresses from DHCP much faster than when it was set up on the Dell server.

Our only complaint is that it came with Windows Small Business Server 2003, which we couldn't use since Small Business Server was convinced it should be everything in the domain -- it wanted to be the domain controller, e-mail server, DHCP server, etc.

As a result, we had to load it with Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition. Also we would have preferred a rack-mounted server.

Since it was a desktop, we had to keep it in our shop on the bench.

At the time, Gateway offered us tower servers instead of one from its rack-mounted series. We specified the server software we wanted, but the request probably got lost in the swarm of e-mails. However, Gateway offers Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition as an option.

We were disappointed that we had to return the server since it was performing so well. In the end, we housed the BlackBerry software and DHCP on another server, and made the original Dell server the print server. Since the Gateway performed so well, we didn't feel we could put all three back on the old server, as the performance would have been inferior to the Gateway.


Specifications:

BTX chassis

Processor support for: Intel Celeron, Intel Pentium 4 and the dual-core enabled Intel

Pentium D and Intel Pentium Extreme Edition

Support for up to 8 GB of the latest dual-channel 533 MHz ECC DDR2 memory

An integrated Quad-port SATA controller providing support for up to four SATA hard drives

Choice of 80 GB, 250 GB or 400 GB SATA II hard drives

Choice of 73 GB, 146 GB or 300 GB SCSI hard drives

Support for embedded SATA RAID 1/ 10

Five expansion slots (three PCI express slots and two 32-bit PCI slots)

Multi-optical drive support including CD, DVD/CD-RW and DVD-RW

Single fixed 400W power supply standard or an optional dual 500W redundant power supplies (required for Pentium D and Pentium Extreme Edition processor options)

Gateway System Management Monitoring Service (real-time monitoring tool that conducts ongoing systems checks to catch and alleviate problems, thereby decreasing network interruptions)

Price: Starts at $599

Rating: 4 out of 5