Rollout: Gateway's E-9522R Servers

Gateway has proven it can produce hardware that is, feature-for-feature, on par with industry big boys' gear. Question is, can the company overcome its consumer roots and gain the confidence of IT pros? We took a long, hard look at both its latest AMD Opteron-based offering, the Gateway E-9522R, and the company's position in the server market. Judging by this device, the answer is an unqualified "maybe."

Don't get us wrong: The 2U E-9522R is a solid device, and its plentiful processor options, tool-less disassembly for service and four Gigabit Ethernet NICs will serve Gateway's SMB/SME, education and government target markets well. The company has cultivated these buyers with promises of an increased focus on service and hardware redun-dancy features to capture share while larger competitors, such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM, focus on the enterprise.

However, though the system is worthy, Gateway doesn't do anything with the E-9522R that makes it pop in the ultracompetitive x86 server market. Moreover, the company suffers from an image problem. It remains to be seen whether competitive pricing can lure IT buyers out of their Tier 1 comfort zone.

Moo-ving On Up?For IT, Gateway is somewhat of a conundrum when considered in light of the overall enterprise server market. Although it hasn't yet made the leap into the big leagues, it has parlayed strengths gained from its strong consumer/retail experience into wins in the smaller business, education and government arenas. These strengths include an ability to respond quickly with U.S.-based technical support and a management team that takes customer issues seriously. Gateway believes this value-add approach, combined with good warranties and hardware features on par with those available from Tier 1 competitors, will win the hearts of smaller customers. And sometimes, it's right.

Still, size does matter. IT pros know that Gateway's ability to influence the market--and other vendors--is limited. We're accustomed to software makers automatically supporting equipment from HP, Dell or IBM, for example, but IT may not enjoy that same advantage with Gateway gear.

In addition, servers aren't Gateway's main business. Retail desktops and laptops are. Gateway has been in the server market for several years but has stumbled on occasion, as with an ill-fated blade-server venture a few years ago. The company must stress its continued commitment to rackmount servers to ease the minds of IT pros used to seeing those distinctive boxes under the Christmas tree, not in the data center.

Where's The Beef?

The E-9522R server is a step in the right direction. This 2U system ships with standard racking rails; toolless rails with cable management are available for an extra $199. The E-9522R comes with good storage options: SATA or SAS or a combination of the two with the base controller. With an optional on-motherboard mezzanine controller, the E-9522R will support RAID 1, 5, 6 and 10 plus a hot spare. These options are in line with what competitors are offering.

The E-9522R can hold as many as six front-accessible hot-swappable 3.5-inch hard disks. This is adequate, but HP offers as many as eight of the new 2.5-inch hard disks in SAS or SCSI. On the plus side, the E-9522R has an interesting feature in the form of an external SAS/SATA port on the rear of the machine, making adding block-level storage extremely easy.

Another aspect of the Gateway E-9522R is the number of available Gigabit Ethernet NICs: It has four on-board copper NICs, and customers are offered an additional four NICs from an optional Intel four-port copper Gigabit Ethernet card. That's more default NICs than any competing product. Gateway also includes a lights-out management feature standard on the E-9522R, abbreviated as GLO (Gateway Lights Out). The GLO management module by ServerEngines is unique. The main video chip, a Matrox, is on the management card, rather than on the system board. Gateway told us this allows for faster redirection of video during remote operations. The GLO card is usable through a 10/100 copper port for out-of-band management, and Gateway offers an advanced GLO management pack that provides IP KVM functionality and remote media mount. These extended capabilities are available as options in competing systems. The E-9522R also offers IPMI 2.0 and an optional management LCD.

Our $4,471 test system supported a total of 24 GB of memory; that will rise to 48 total GB of system memory once 4-GB DIMMs are certified by Gateway. The motherboard has 12 slots of user-accessible system memory, and we liked having front and back USB ports as well as front and back VGA ports for companies that use a "crash cart" rather than a conventional KVM.

The E-9522R boasts extensive expansion card slots for a machine in its class, with three PCIe x4 low-profile slots, two PCIe x4 full height slots and one 64-bit 100-MHz PCI-X full-height slot. By offering both PCIe and PCI-X, Gateway is assuring customers they will not be constrained by a lack of either kind of card slot.Bottom line, the Gateway E-9522R is a perfectly acceptable alternative to 2U Opteron servers from Dell, HP or IBM. Gateway has included the features and functionality necessary for customers in both its chosen market segment and the general enterprise space. Although there is nothing that makes the Gateway E-9522R shout out for purchase, it is a solid, well-built machine that offers good value and some interesting features, priced at or below competitor's offerings.

Steven J. Schuchart Jr. is Network Computing's Managing Technology Editor. Write to him at [email protected].