Systems Overview; The Power 720 Server - IBM Power 720 Overview

1.1 Systems overview

You can find detailed information about the Power 720 and Power 740 systems within the
following sections.

1.1.1 The Power 720 server

The Power 720 offers a choice of a 4-core, 6-core, or 8-core configuration running at 3.6 GHz,
available in a 4U rack-mount or a tower form factor. The POWER7+ processor chip in this
server is a 64-bit, 4-core, 6-core, or 8-core module with 10 MB of L3 cache per core and
256 KB of L2 cache per core.
The Power 720 server supports a maximum of 16 DDR3 DIMM slots, with eight DIMM slots
included in the base configuration and eight DIMM slots available with an optional memory
riser card. A system with the optionally installed memory riser card has a maximum memory
of 512 GB.
The Power 720 system includes an integrated SAS controller, offering RAID 0, 1, and 10
support; two storage backplanes are available. The base configuration supports up to six
small form factor (SFF) SAS hard-disk drives (HDDs) or solid-state drives (SSDs), an SATA
DVD, and a half-high tape drive. A higher-function backplane is available as an option. This
supports up to eight SFF SAS HDDs or SSDs, an SATA DVD, a half-high tape drive, Dual
175 MB Write Cache RAID with RAID 5 and 6 support, and an external SAS port.
All HDDs or SSDs are hot-swap and front accessible. If the internal storage capacity is not
sufficient, additional disk I/O drawers can be attached to the system unit, providing large
storage capacity and multiple partition support.
The Power 720 includes five Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) Express (PCIe) Gen2
full-height profile slots for installing adapters in the system. Optionally, an additional riser card
with four PCIe Gen2 low-profile (LP) slots can be installed in a GX++ slot available on the
backplane. This option extends the number of slots to nine. The system also includes a PCIe
x4 Gen2 slot containing a PCIe2 4-Port 10/100/1000 Base-TX Ethernet adapter.
If additional PCIe slots are required, the Power 720 supports external I/O drawers in place of
the riser card, allowing for a maximum of two PCIe drawers (feature codes: FC 5802 and
FC 5877). This support increases the number of available slots by 20 to 25 PCIe slots in total.
Only the 6-core and 8-core systems support external I/O slots.
Unsupported: The Integrated Virtual Ethernet (IVE) adapter is not available for the
Power 720.
The Power 720 also implements Light Path diagnostics, which provides an obvious and
intuitive means to positively identify failing components. With Light Path diagnostics, system
engineers and administrators can more easily and quickly diagnose hardware problems.
An upgrade is available from an IBM POWER6® processor-based IBM Power 520 server
(8203-E4A) to the Power 720 (8202-E4D). A Power 520 (9408-M25) can be converted to a
Power 520 (8203-E4A) and then be upgraded to a Power 720 (8202-E4D). You can also
directly upgrade from a Power 520 (8203-E4A) to the Power 720 (8202-E4D), preserving the
existing serial number.
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IBM Power 720 and 740 Technical Overview and Introduction