The Five Best Business Servers of 2013

Looking for a business server to pump up your storage capacity? Start with this list of five. You’ll find servers suited to small business use, medium business use and rack servers for expanding business use.

Buffalo Terastation Pro
The Terastation pro is something of an oddity – a small networked server that costs nearly as much as a full blown rack option. For a small to medium sized business that knows it’s on the up, though, the Terastation offers a lot of oomph in a sensibly sized package. It’s got loads of hot swap storage, and can support all sorts of RAID. Reading and writing speeds are outstanding and it has four different file sharing setups. Compatible with Time Machine, and capable of supporting BitTorrent, the Buffalo is a strong contender for mini server of the year.

Netgear ReadyNAS Duo
It looks like an old school stereo, and it works like a dream. The ReadyNAS is able to power six drives, which slot in behind the door grille – making the whole thing a sort of tiny rack storage unit. Supports USB 3.0 and 2.0, and with instant backup from the unit to an external USB disk. The ReadyNAS also helps with its own installation, by employing RAIDar from a network PC. One of the key selling points for the unit is its ability to use open sourced add ons, which have been created by other Netgear users. It’s relatively cheap, too.

HP Proliant G7 Server
The HP Proliant is Hewlett Packard’s standard midrange server. It’s designed to support small to medium sized businesses with a limited knowledge of IT systems – so it’s simple, robust and easy to use. The downside of this configuration is its limited capabilities – but then if you have the storage needs or the knowhow for something with more bells and whistles, you won’t be using the Proliant G7 in the first place.

Dell PowerEdge T410
Dell’s entry level tower server is designed for small businesses that don’t have the room for a dedicated server installation. It’s a storage heavy hitter, which supports six cold swap drive units as standard. You can also add in extra hot swap drive space if you need to. The PowerEdge T410 delivers RAID as well. If you’re buying on a budget, opt for the baseline model, which has an LED diagnostics and monitoring pane. If you want to have a couple more sophisticated touches, you can choose the LCD diagnostic panel instead.

IBM System x3650 M4
IBM’s M4 System server is the latest incarnation of the company’s long standing range of respected business servers. It’s designed to take double CPUs, a bunch of PCI Express add-ins and 24 DDR3 DIMMs. Like most IBM products at this level, the IBM System x3650 M4 is designed to give as much flexibility as possible, and can be scaled up as a business grows thanks to its maximum storage load of 18TB. The power used by the M4, even when running flat out, is still well within acceptable ranges. G2Digital can help you set up your server room: see what we offer here.
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