Compact server ETegro Hyperion ES200 G4

Our main products are rack-mounted servers, but we also remember the existence of small companies and small offices, which often need one small server. And today we would like to bring to your attention exactly this model: ETegro Hyperion ES200 G4.



But before we begin acquaintance with the body, we make a small digression. We are well aware that since childhood, all Habrolians have become accustomed to “spinning” computers, and each of you will assemble better and cheaper. But practice shows that there are quite a few companies in the world that find it more convenient to buy a finished product with a guarantee, shifting the solution of technical problems onto others' shoulders. For them, this note may be the most interesting, all the rest, we immediately ask to treat it as our view of how the compact pedestal server should look like. And, by the way, we will be happy to hear your suggestions for its improvement and will be serious about criticism.
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And now - a review.



We did not tinker with the appearance of the case or make any decorations in it - the ES200 G4 looks purely utilitarian, like the most common system unit for a small motherboard. If we talk about its size, it is only slightly larger than the standard NAS servers in the range available on the market. It is convenient to install it on the desktop in a small office, the height of the case is only 27 cm.





The entire front panel is one large door, covered with a fine mesh. It housed the usual LEDs and lock. Of course, children are unlikely to climb their fingers at the server buttons, as is usually the case with home computers, but still some will benefit from protection from unauthorized access to hard drives.

Behind the panel there are two USB ports. It is unlikely that someone will use them so often that it would be necessary to take them out of the door, but the very fact of their existence will surely please system administrators who may happen to deal with the server directly. Here, in the upper left corner, and the power button: behind the lock is safer, no one “accidentally” pokes a button.







Most of the front panel takes a basket of 4 hard drives. The server, though small, is still a server, so hotplug is implemented for the disks. The remaining space of the front panel is occupied by the ventilation grill - cooling will never be redundant. The connectors are, of course, universal and support both SATA and SAS disks, but it seems to us that the overwhelming majority will choose the first option. Here in our configurator, you can order the installation of disks from 1 to 4 TB, which will give up to 12 TB of available space when using RAID5. Hardly anyone will need more from such a small server, right?



But the back panel is surprisingly simple and unsightly. The power supply is nestled on top, below a small plate with ports, one slot for a low-profile expansion card and ... everything. A set of connectors is somewhat different from the usual for both servers and conventional motherboards: there are two Gigabit Ethernet ports with TOE support, 4 USB 2.0 ports and a DVI connector for connecting a monitor, if there is a need for this.



At that all at once pay attention, looking inside the case - so it is on the seat for the 2.5-inch drive, perched on the side panel of the disc basket. As probably many have already noticed, we are strict adherents of the concept that the OS should be located on a separate physical hard disk. And we frankly recommend everyone to use SSD for these purposes - these drives now fit perfectly for the installation of a server system.





The selection of available expansion cards for a single slot is quite rich. Firstly, SAS HBA or SAS-RAID controllers manufactured by LSI are installed here. Well, for those who build an array on SATA disks using OS, but at the same time need more ports, we offer the second option: two- and four-port Gigabit Ethernet controllers.





It is easy to guess that the server is based on a mini-ITX motherboard. Well, now we will announce that moment, how this server differs from the above-mentioned numerous NAS, why, from our point of view, it deserves the title of server. Its motherboard is built on a full-fledged Intel C204 chipset and supports the installation of an Intel Core i3 2100 or Intel Xeon E3 1225/1245 V2 processor. Complements them up to 8 GB of DDR3 server memory with ECC error correction.





The traditional problem of such small buildings is the quality of their cooling. This server is unlikely to be located in a dedicated server room, so we needed to ensure good cooling and not make it very noisy. The howl of high-speed small-diameter fans is not at all the sound that works well for . Therefore, in this case, we used one relatively low-speed fan of large diameter, which pumps air through the basket with hard disks and with the help of a special plastic duct directs the air flow to the motherboard directly to the processor and memory bars. In our opinion, the solution turned out to be at least somewhat cumbersome, but extremely effective. An additional advantage is that using a standard fan and snap-on fastener makes it easy to replace it.

Well, perhaps, all that we wanted to tell about the ETegro Hyperion ES200 G4. As always, we will be happy to answer your questions, and next time we will talk about a rather unusual server - a complete ready-made cluster for two nodes located in one building.