Broadberry CyberServe R13044BB review

With support for Intel's E5-2400 Xeon processors and a low power draw, the CyberServe R13044BB is good value, even if the remote management features are a tad on the light side.

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IT Pro Verdict

The CyberServe R13044BB delivers plenty of raw processing power in a compact rack chassis with a low power draw. It’s better value than Dell’s PowerEdge R420 or HP’s ProLiant DL360e Gen8 although remote management features are more basic. Make sure you specify 750W power supplies as well as the 460W models aren’t up to the job.

Intel's range of server platforms and motherboards exploded this year as it launched a huge family of products to support its E5 Xeon processors.

For its CyberServe R13044BB, Broadberry Data Systems has used Intel's R1300BB platform which comes with the new S2400BB Black Bear Pass' motherboard.

Intel has aimed this partnership firmly at data centres looking for a low cost, low profile server that delivers a good performance per watt ratio. To this end the server supports the E5-2400 Xeons which are designed to lower costs but without incurring significant compromises on performance.

It's worth pointing out that the E5-2400 processors aren't much cheaper than their more powerful E5-2600 counterparts. However, they use a different Socket-B2 (LGA1356) package which has one inter-socket QPI link and support for 12 DIMM slots as opposed to 24, so the motherboards actually cost less to manufacture.

The price for the review system includes two 2.3GHz E5-2470 processors which are one of a pair of Advanced models. They have the fastest QPI speed of 8GT/sec, the top 20MB L3 cache and support Intel's Turbo Boost + technology which allows their cores to clocked up to 3.1GHz when there is sufficient thermal budget.

Cyberserve

The server offers a well designed interior with easy access to all key components

Storage options

Storage features are plentiful as the chassis supports four LFF hot-swap hard disks but another variant of this chassis offers eight SFF drive bays. The motherboard has a pair of embedded mini-SAS four-port connectors and can handle either 3Gb/sec SATA or SAS drives

The system is set up for SATA drives with only the first mini-SAS port enabled but Intel offers an extensive range of storage upgrade options using a hardware key. There are seven colour coded versions which include a green key which turns the first four ports from SATA to SAS and a purple key which activates the second mini-SAS port for SAS drives and enables RAID-5 across them all.

A slot alongside supports mSATA SSDs up to 128GB whilst another above it accepts an eUSB SSD up to 32GB. There's more as you can boot the server from an optional InnoDisk SATA DOM (disk on module) and the interface includes dedicated power pins for the device.

Cyberserve 1

Intel's RMM4 provides remote management and monitoring tools via a dedicated network port

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.