Lenovo ThinkServer a Boon for Remote Offices

Lenovo's ThinkServer RD120 is a good fit for businesses-including retail chains, restaurants and larger enterprises-that have offices in multiple and dispersed locations. The Lenovo ThinkServer combines well-designed hardware built to save on space and power costs with a complete and solid management platform. The software makes it easy to configure the server centrally and install it in the remote office.

Many businesses have multiple locations with server requirements. Examples include retail and restaurant chains, any large enterprise with smaller local offices, and local service centers.

Although each scenario may involve different hardware and software to meet individual business needs, they all have certain things in common, such as the need to reduce deployment and ongoing management overhead and increase availability and data security.

The mother ship can rarely experience good results from simply shipping a new server to a branch office, but deployments that require on-site personnel can be costly due to travel. In these cases, the Holy Grail is a server that can be centrally configured and easily installed once it has arrived at the branch office.

Click here for a look at the Lenovo ThinkServer RD120.   

Video: Lenovo RD120 Server Under the Covers

Video: Lenovo Light Path Diagnostics Speeds Troubleshooting

Video: Whoosh! The Mystical Lenovo RD120 Fan Dance

Lenovo's ThinkServer RD120 hardware is thoughtfully designed with this in mind. The 2U server is optimized for high performance and low space and electricity use, accommodating two Intel Xeon 5000 processors, up to 48GB of RAM in 12 slots, and four PCI-E expansion slots. We tested a ThinkServer with the following configuration: dual Intel Xeon E5430 2.66MHz CPU, 4GB memory, two 250 GB SATA hard drives configured for RAID 0 (model 644713u, at a cost of $2,147). We ran 64-bit Microsoft Windows Server 2008, although the server is also compatible with 32- and 64 bit versions of Windows Server 2003, Windows Small Business Server, VMware, Citrix Systems' Xen Hypervisor, Novell SUSE, and Red Hat Linux.