Computer.co.uk

For a small business operating on a tight budget, looking around for a server, whether its for a firewall, mail or filestore, is never going to be an easy task.

The devil tends to be in the detail, with the basic machine costing relatively little, and the real cost coming in the upgrades and support contracts on offer.

The PowerEdge T100 is no different in this respect. Starting out at £219 for the base configuration, you can mount up a invoice of 4 figures in next to no time, with the additional costs of 1Tb of RAID 0/1 storage space running to more than £600.

Putting that aside, if you are looking for a fast, basic server then you could do far worse than to resist the temptation of the obscenely-priced upgrades. Simply opting to bump up the processor to a quad-core Intel Xeon X3220 for just £20 extra will give you a considerable speed-increase and not break the bank into the bargain.

As to what the small business on a shoestring could do about adding storage space, the photos on the PowerEdge T100 site hint that there may be a free drive bay on the inside of the chassis, but it doesn’t appear that a RAID controller comes as standard…