Combining high-performance architecture with high-performance Xeon processors
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6
2.5-inch SAS
•
10,000
RPMs — 73.4 or
146.8GB
(
587.2GB
maximum
per chassis;
2.349TB
in a 4-chassis
configuration)
•
15,000
RPMs —
73.4GB
(
293.6GB
per chassis;
1.174TB
per 4 chassis)
2-5-inch drives 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
direct-attach NAS and SAN solutions.
Integrated Virtualization
Selected models of the x3850 M2 ship with an
IBM 4GB USB 2.0 Flash Key
installed preloaded
with
VMware ESXi 3.5
. This is an embedded version of VMware ESX 3.5, fully contained on the
flash drive and requiring no disk space—not an “ESX Lite.” Rather than management through a
Service Console based on a Linux operating system, ESXi 3.5 relies on aggregate management
tools, including VirtualCenter, the Remote Command Line interface and the introduction of CIM
for standards-based and agentless hardware monitoring.
VMware ESXi 3.5 includes all the performance, scalability and compatibility features of ESX 3.5,
including full
VMFS
support across FC SAN, iSCSI SAN, and NAS, and
4-way VSMP
. Because
it runs from flash memory, it’s extremely fast and ideal for diskless configurations. It also offers
enhanced security, because it runs without an operating system-based console and is
updated/patched much like firmware. Licensing works the same as for “standard” ESX 3.5.
If you prefer
Microsoft Hyper-V
™
to VMware, the intent is for the x3850 M2 and x3950 M2 to
fully support Microsoft’s hypervisor software installed on the system HDD at a future date.
Disk/Tape Controllers
All models include an integrated eight-port
LSI 1078
Serial-Attach SCSI
(SAS) controller. This
controller supports up to
four
internal
SAS LVD (low-voltage differential) drives.
The integrated SAS controller offers
hardware
RAID-0
/
1
support for those SAS drives. The
ServeRAID-MR10k
option adds additional RAID levels, including
RAID-10, 5, 50, 6
and
60
,
along with
256MB
of
battery-backed cache
memory for higher performance and data integrity,
without
consuming a valuable PCIe adapter slot.
The
SAS
controller provides data transfer speeds of up to
300MB
per second
1
in
each
direction
(
full-duplex
) across the SAS bus, for an aggregate speed of
600MBps
, nearly double that of
Ultra320 SCSI’s
320MBps
(half-duplex) bandwidth. The serial design of the SAS bus allows
maximum performance to be maintained as additional drives are added.
Additional external SAS/SATA disk storage, as well as tape backup, is available using the
external SAS port
on the system unit, or via one of several supported iSCSI or FC SAN
controllers.
Drive Bays
The eX4 servers contain
five
drive bays (per chassis) in all—including
four
2.5-inch
HDD bays
that support
hot-swap SAS
drives totaling up to
587.6GB
.
A
24X/10X/24X/8X
2
speed (ultraslim, 0.5”) CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive with an IDE
interface ships standard in all x3850 M2 and x3950 M2 servers. No floppy drive is supplied with
any model; an external USB floppy drive may be used, if needed.
For still more storage, a direct-attach, iSCSI, or FC SAN external expansion option can be
added, using an optional controller.
High-Performance Adapter Slots
There are
seven
physical
x8
(“by 8”)
PCIe (PCI Express)
adapter slots standard (per chassis).
Each is capable of supporting
x4
or
x8
adapters.
All slots are
half-length/full-height
.
Electrically
they are x8 slots as well (meaning that they operate at full
x8
4GBps
speeds). Slots
6
and
7
are
Active PCIe hot-add/hot-swap
slots, offering the capability to add or replace
adapters without having to shut down the system.
PCI Express
is a high-performance, low-latency, next-generation serial I/O bus that is rapidly
replacing the older parallel PCI and PCI-X buses. A
x8
PCIe adapter offers approximately
four
1
Data transfer rates depend on many factors and are often less than the maximum possible.
