Leadership enterprise server with significantly lower cost of ownership in a highly available and
expandable, rack-dense, 1U dual-socket server
Please see the Legal Information section for important notices and information.
8
Drive Bays
The x3550 M3 supports up to
8
drive bays. Base models include
4 2.5-inch
drive bays and
one
5.25-inch
bay, for an optional DVD-RW drive. Using an expansion kit, the number of 2.5-inch
bays can be increased to 8; however, this requires the removal of the 5.25-inch bay. The 2.5-inch
bays support a combination of SATA and SAS HDDs, as well as solid-state drives (SSDs)
Hot-swap
drives may be inserted or removed through the front of the server without powering off
the system.
Simple-swap
solid-state drives can be inserted or removed through the front of the
server as well; however, the system power must first be turned off.
For additional storage, a direct-attach, NAS or SAN external expansion option can be added,
using an optional controller.
No diskette drive is supplied with any model; an external USB floppy drive may be used, if
needed.
Flexible Internal Storage
The x3550 M3 offers flexibility with up to
8
2.5” HDD bays, supporting high-performance drives
that provide high density/high reliability and allow you to scale up as your business grows.
2.5-inch Hot-Swap SAS
•
7,200
RPMs —
500GB
(
8.0TB
maximum capacity, with
8
bays)
•
10,000
RPMs — 73.4, 146.8, or
300GB
(
2.4TB
maximum)
•
15,000
RPMs
— 73.4 or
146.8GB
(
1.17TB
maximum)
2.5-inch Hot-Swap SATA
•
7,200
RPMs — 160 or
500GB
(
4.0TB
maximum)
•
10,000
RPMs —
300GB
(
2.4TB
maximum)
2.5-inch Hot-Swap
or
Simple-Swap SSDs
•
50GB
High IOPS (
400GB
maximum)
High I/O Performance
– Offers up to 8X more IOPS than HDDs (67/33% read/write OLTP transaction base mix)
– Optimized for heavy mix of read and write operations, such as transaction processing,
media streaming, surveillance, file copy, logging, backup/recovery, and business
Intelligence
Lower-Cost IOPS Performance
– Yields better $/IOPS: lower capacity (GB) required to achieve higher IOPS
– Uses less energy and generates less heat than a hard disk drive
Superior Uptime
– 3X the availability of mechanical disk drives
– No moving parts to fail
– Enterprise wear-leveling to extend life even further
Full OS Support
– Supports all ServerProven OSes
2-5-inch HDDs not only require less space than 3.5-inch drives, they
weigh less, consume half
the power, produce less noise, seek faster,
and offer
increased reliability
.
The hot-swap SAS drives use the Converged Tray for interchangeability with other IBM System
x
®
systems. If you need more storage space, terabyte capacities are possible with external IBM
System Storage direct-attach, NAS and SAN offerings.
Disk Controllers
All x3550 M3 models include a
ServeRAID-BR10il v2
,
ServerRAID-M1015
, or
ServeRAID-
M5014
SAS/SATA controller standard
(model-dependent) to enhance system availability and
data protection without using a PCI slot.
The 3Gbps
5
(x4 PCIe)
ServeRAID-BR10il v2
controller offers hardware
RAID-0
/
1/1E
support (no
cache) for up to 4 HDDs or SSDs.
The
6Gbps
(x8 PCIe)
ServeRAID-M1015
SAS/SATA
controller supports
RAID-0/1/10
(no cache)
for up to 8 drives. The
IBM ServeRAID M1000 Series Advance Feature Key
adds
RAID-5
with
5
Data transfer rates depend on many factors and are often less than the maximum possible.
