Supermicro RTG RX-2280i review

This Ready To Go (RTG) system starts at just under £2,000, so if you need an affordable Xeon E5-2600 rack server with next day delivery, the RX-2280i is for you.

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IT Pro Verdict

The RTG RX-2280i scores well for value as although it comes with a basic hardware package it delivers it at a tantalisingly low price. You’ll be hard pushed to find a cheaper Xeon E5-2600 2U rack server that’s available off the shelf for next day delivery.

ITPRO Value award

Supermicro UK advised us that as long as you place your order with a reseller by 3pm you should have one in your hands the next business day. To ensure the delivery terms can be met, the RTG servers are available only with fixed configurations. If you want a different specification then be prepared to wait as you'll have to go through the normal ordering channels.

The price we've shown is from Servers Direct but the same system is also available from many vendors including Ebuyer and Boston.

The price includes a Silver warranty which provides three year, on-site, NBD cover during 9-5 on weekdays. Supermicro UK handles all service requests and you can increase your cover with Gold or Platinum Health Pack upgrades. Gold extends cover to same day 4-hour response for weekdays while Platinum gives you full 24/7 protection.

Supermicro RTG - 1

Storage features are a strange brew as the LSI and Intel controllers are managed with separate utilities

Storage features

The RX-2280i has the credentials to be a storage server with room for eight hot-swap LFF hard disks across its front panel. The controller arrangement is unusual as the price includes an LSI SAS9211-4i PCI-e RAID card and a 300GB Seagate Cheetah 15K.7 high performance SAS 2 hard disk.

The LSI card supports up to four physical drives and is cabled to the lower four drive bays on the backplane. RAID options are basic as the card only supports mirrors and stripes.

A plethora of SATA ports sprout from the Supermicro X9DRW-iF motherboard. It has two SATA 3 ports, four SATA 2 ports and a separate SATA/SCU quad-port connector which is linked via a fan-out cable to the upper four drive bays.

The SATA ports are handled by the embedded Intel C602 chipset which offers mirrors, stripes and RAID-5 arrays across them all. To summarise, the RTG fixed configuration server supports 6Gbps SAS drives as JBODs, mirrors and stripes in the lower four bays and SATA drives with RAID-5 in the top four bays.

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Supermicro's redesigned remote management interface is more informative than its predecessor

Dave Mitchell
Dave Mitchell

Dave is an IT consultant and freelance journalist specialising in hands-on reviews of computer networking products covering all market sectors from small businesses to enterprises. Founder of Binary Testing Ltd – the UK’s premier independent network testing laboratory - Dave has over 45 years of experience in the IT industry.

Dave has produced many thousands of in-depth business networking product reviews from his lab which have been reproduced globally. Writing for ITPro and its sister title, PC Pro, he covers all areas of business IT infrastructure, including servers, storage, network security, data protection, cloud, infrastructure and services.