|
| 1. What is one of the biggest features of
the SR101 over other products in the server market? |
| It was not designed by multiple companies lacking a common
focus. The SR101 was designed by Gigabyte for ultra high density, rack
optimized operating environments. The goal - eliminate the technical
obstacles that arise when using assemblies designed and manufactured by
multiple manufacturers who lack a common focus and direction. |
|
| 2. What base technology does Gigabyte bring
to the SR101? |
| First Gigabyte is one of 3 motherboard manufacturers world
wide who have the design and manufacturing facilities plus the experience of
shipping over a 1 million motherboards a month. These are motherboards that
are executing virtually every operating system designed to be run on an
Intel based platform. Gigabyte then designed an efficient environment to put
the motherboard into, an environment based exclusively on a rack optimized
1U chassis design. |
|
| 3. Why do you call the SR101 a server
platform? |
| A server platform is a product, made up with what we
classify as non commodity components such as motherboard, chassis, power
supply, signal and power distribution systems with an efficient cooling
system. It is that stable platform that you add your commodity products such
as processor(s), memory, disk drive(s), OS and application software. |
|
| 4. What chipset is Gigabyte using in the
SR101 and why? |
| We selected the VIA Apollo Pro chipset because it supports a
133MHz FSB bus for increased bandwidth, a high speed 133MHz memory bus with
their Virtual Channel Ram that uses registered SDRAM ECC DIMM or VC133 DRAM
for superior memory performance, flexible memory configurations at minimal
cost. These advanced memory technologies provide the bandwidth and
performance necessary for even the most demanding of applications. |
|
| 5. What options are available for the
SR101? |
| We have one option, Rackslides. |
|
| 6 .What operating systems does the
SR101 support? |
| The SR101 supports Windows NT, Windows 2000, Linux (RED HAT
6.2, 7.0, 7.1, SuSE 7.1,7.2) & Netware 5.1. |
|
| 7. Do you sell your products to
companies who OEM or private label products like your server platforms? |
| Yes. We sell our products to the channel, OEM’s and
companies that private label products. We can put together a product and
support program to match the unique market needs of each class of customer. |
|
| 8. Is the SR101 Microsoft certified? |
| Yes. You can find the SR101 listed on Microsoft Hardware
Certification List web site located at http://www.microsoft.com/hwtest/hcl. |
|
| 9. What type of drives can we put into
the SR101 drive bays? |
| The drive bays are designed to handle any 1 inch high ULTRA
66/100 disk drives. |
|
| 10. Does the SR101 have an integrated
RAID function? |
| Yes. The SR101 has an integrated RAID 0 & 1 controller
chipset that is manufactured by Promise Technology Inc. The Chip set support
RAID 0 - disk stripping - for increased disk performance and RAID 1 - disk
mirroring - for drive fault tolerance. To enhance the RAID 1 function, the
SR101 also has supports hot swappable drives. Should one of the drives fail
in a RAID 1 mode, it allows the failed drive to be replaced without taking
the system down. |
|
| 11. What benefits are provided by
having an integrated RAID controller? |
The integrated RAID function offers the following benefits:
a. With RAID 0, you can increase the performance of your hard drives by
splitting the movement of data equally
between the drives.
b. With RAID 1, you get an extra level of protection from hard drive
failure. With this feature, if a drive fails, the
system will continue operating on the surviving drive.
c. It saves you a PCI slot. |
|
| 12. How does RAID recovery work under
condition of a failed hard drive |
There are two levels of recovery that can take place. They
are:
a. First is at the RAID BIOS level. The BIOS program allows users to
copy the complete hard drive image from one
to the other.
b. The other recovery is done after the system boot-up, where the RAID
utility program will automatically rebuild
data on the replaced drive. |
|
| |
| 13. What operating systems does the
Promise RAID chipset support |
| At the present time it supports Windows NT & 2000 and Linux,
Red Hat 7.0 & 7.2. This list will be updated frequently, contact us if you
are using a different operating system or a version of Linux that is
different from that used by Red Hat 7.2. |
|
| 14. What are the benefits of having
hot-swappable hard drives? Is there any performance delay? |
| The effort of changing a defective hard drive has been
reduced to a simple pull out action without having to open the chassis.
While the system is rebuilding the new drive, the operating system and
applications continue running. The network clients should not see any
differences cause by the drive rebuild operation. |
|
| 15. If I am using a operating system
different then that supported by the Promise RAID Chipset, is there a way
that I can by pass the Promise RAID chipset and connect directly to the
drive bays? |
| Yes. By re-arranging the ATA cables inside the SR101 you
can by pass the Promise RAID chip set and connect the drive bays directly to
the on board ATA 66 drive ports. By doing this you will no longer have hot
swap capability because this functionality is built into the Promise Chip
set and associated RAID software. |
|
| 16. What Processors does the SR101
support? |
| The SR101 supports Intel Pentium III processors with speeds
up to 1GHz. |
|
| 17. Does the SR101 support dual
processor configurations? |
| Yes. An added feature of the SR101 is that you can start
with a single processor configuration and as your server requirements grow,
you can add a second processor later. |
|
| 18. What memory does the SR101 use? |
| Up to 4 GB of PC133MHz ECC SDRAM memory. |
|
| 19. How do I expand the SR101 memory? |
| Maximum memory configuration is attained by installing four
1024MB 133MHz registered ECC SDRAM DIMMs (one in each DIMM socket). Memory
can be expanded 1 DIMM module at a time. |
|
| 20. What are some of the benefits of
having a built in dual NIC controller? |
- Extra PCI slots - having dual embedded NIC cards does not consume PCI
slots. In a 1U rack optimized package, the SR101 can be applied to
applications not available to other manufacturers.
- Fail over - the dual NIC is able to work like a single NIC card. If
one should fail, the other takes over with users not experiencing any
difference in network performance.
- Load balancing - as mentioned above the dual NIC work like one, each
sharing the network traffic, effectively doubling the sever I/O bandwidth,
resulting in better network performance.
- Firewall- the dual NIC configuration has the capability to provide
firewall function by using one NIC port for outside Internet and the other
for local area traffic.
|
|
| 21. Does the SR101 contain any
internal monitoring and reporting functions? |
| Yes. The SR101 has an ACPI (Advanced Configuration & Power
Interface) function built into the motherboard. Some of the functions
monitored by the ACPI function monitors are the presence of a second CPU,
fan speed & temperature for each CPU, system temperature & Voltages. If the
installed operating system supports the ACPI function, as Windows does, the
operating can perform tasks like automatically power itself off if the CPU
temperature exceeds pre-selected limits. |
| |
| Back to the top |
