Fujitsu Primergy RX350 S7 review

Fujitsu’s new RX350 S7 neatly fills a gap in its Primergy server range and showcases Intel’s latest Xeon E5-2600 processors. In this exclusive review, Dave Mitchell looks at this highly expandable system and its modular features.

Remote management features are very good. The server has Fujitsu's embedded iRMC S3 controller, which provides a dedicated service port and remote management access. The web interface offers plenty of information about critical components too, and provides full access to the power supplies.

Fujitsu Primergy RX350 S7

Fujitsu Primergy RX350 S7

The iRMC S3 controller provides good remote server management and monitoring features.

The power monitoring section displays details of power usage, including details on what the individual components are consuming. Historical graphs of overall consumption are also available and can go back over a year.

Remote control is not a standard feature and full KVM-over-IP instead requires the optional advanced upgrade. This also adds virtual media services that allow a device on the guest system to be designated and used for storage or boot media.

Fujitsu Primergy RX350 S7

Fujitsu Primergy RX350 S7

Power consumption details can be viewed for individual components from the iRMC S3 web interface.

Power options are good, with a choice of 450W or 800W hot-plug, 94% efficiency, supplies and the Primergy RX350 S7 can take up for four. The review system came with a pair of 800W supplies and the low 95W TDP of the E5-2620 Xeons showed up clearly in our energy consumption tests.

With Windows Server 2008 R2 idling, our power meter registered a draw of only 116W. With the SiSoft Sandra benchmarking app pushing all 24 logical cores to the max, this peaked at a mere 224W.

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.