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IBM System x3950 M2 and x3850 M2 Technical Introduction
Continuous health monitoring and control
The RSA II continuously monitors all important system parameters (such as temperature,
voltage, and so on). So if, for example, a fan fails, the RSA II forces the remaining fans to
increase speed to compensate for the failing fan.
Event log
You can get access to the event logs of the server and the power-on self-test (POST) log
and export them while the server is up and running.
Operating system failure screen capture
When the operating system hangs, for example, with a blue screen, you can do a screen
capture for support purposes. Additionally, the RSA II stores the last failure screen in
memory so you can refer to it later.
Remote media
As a part of the remote control feature, the remote media capability lets you use diskette
drives, diskette images, optical drives such as DVD or CD-ROM drives, or optical drive
images of the system where the Web interface of RSA II is running on the remote PC, and
make them appear to be local drives.
Trusted Platform Module
The x3850 M2 and x3950 M2 implement the Trusted Platform Module (TPM), which ensures
that the process from power-on to hand-off to the operating system boot loader is secure. The
Core Root of Trusted Measurements (CRTM) code is embedded in the BIOS for logging and
signing of the BIOS. In addition, you can enable the ACPI setting in the BIOS (disabled by
default) which will assist any operating system that has support written into its code to use the
security features of this module.
The TPM is TCG V1.2-compliant, and is ready for use with software purchased from the third
party list of the TPM Ecosystem partners in compliance with the TPM v1.2 specification.
Active Energy Manager
IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager™ (formerly known as IBM PowerExecutive™)
is a combination of hardware and software that enables direct power monitoring through IBM
Director. By utilizing an operating system that supports this feature, customers will be able to
monitor the power consumption of the x3850 M2 and x3950 M2, and then modify or cap the
consumption if so required.
Active Energy Manager enables customers to monitor actual power draw and thermal loading
information. This helps customers with:
More efficient planning of new datacenter construction or modification
Proper power input sizing based on physical systems
Justification of incremental hardware purchases based on available input power capacity
Better utilization of existing resources
For more information see:
http://www.ibm.com/systems/management/director/extensions/actengmrg.html
