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Gateway GR360 F1 review

By Dave Mitchell, 1 Sep 2010

Rating:

Price as reviewed:£1,353 ex VAT

Gateway is moving back into the server market in a big way and has HP clearly in its sights. In this review we see if the new GR360 F1 has the muscle to take on the establishment.

For remote management the server has an embedded RMM chip and dedicated network port. The tidy web interface allows you to remotely control the server, such as turning it on and off, resetting it or gracefully closing down its OS.

You can view details about all critical components and use LDAP and RADIUS servers to authenticate remote access. The RMM features aren’t as sophisticated as HP’s iLO2 chip, but they do work well and include KVM-over-IP remote control as standard and not as an optional extra.

Gateway’s server deployment tools won’t beat Dell’s LifeCycle Controller, but its bootable Smart Setup disk does include a useful toolbox of utilities. These can be used to install an OS, configure the remote management controller, create RAID arrays and clone system configurations for use with multiple servers.

Our favourite 1U rack server is still Dell’s superbly designed PowerEdge R610 and the Gateway GR360 F1 won’t be changing our minds. However, it does compete strongly with HP’s DL360 as it has equally good expansion potential but is significantly better value.