IBM 79784AU Product Manual page 2

A highly available and expandable, rack-dense, 1U dual-socket SMP server, for application
serving in Web environments
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All models require Chipkill-enabled DIMMs (provided standard) for Chipkill protection.
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Data transfer rates may be less than the maximum possible.
Please see the Legal Information section for important notices and information.
superior performance capable of tackling the toughest jobs. 64-bit extensions provide the
flexibility to run 32-bit and 64-bit applications concurrently.
• Low-voltage processors draw less energy and produce less waste heat than high-voltage
processors, thus helping to reduce data center energy costs. Some dual-core Xeon
processors use only 65W. This is half the wattage consumed by older 130W processors. The
50W and 80W quad-core processors are even more economical, consuming only 12.5W and
20W (respectively) per core, vs. 32.5W per core for the 65W dual-core processors.
• Ultra-fast fully buffered 667MHz PC2-5300 DDR II ECC memory with Chipkill
provides speed and high availability.
• Two high-speed PCI-E adapter slots offer investment protection by supporting high-
performance adapters, such as 10Gb Ethernet, Fibre Channel and InfiniBand cards, none of
which will run in older 33MHz and 66MHz conventional PCI slots.
• Integrated ServeRAID-8k-l provides RAID-0/1/10 support at no extra charge and without
consuming a valuable adapter slot. RAID-0 offers improved disk performance via data striping;
RAID-1 offers disk mirroring for high availability, and RAID-10 combines the benefits of speed
and availability. The x3550 is upgradeable to full RAID-0/1/10/1E/5/6 support, using the
optional ServeRAID-8k card. It also offers higher performance, due to the 256MB battery-
backed onboard cache.
• Up to two 3.5-inch or four 2.5-inch (depending on the model) hot-swap SAS hard disk
drives offer high-performance with high availability. The SAS controller provides full-duplex (2
x 300MBps) data transfers for SAS drives. For lower cost and high capacity, other models
support up to two simple-swap Serial ATA drives. The SATA II drives offer performance
nearly equal to that of Ultra320 SCSI (300MBps half-duplex vs. 320MBps half-duplex,
respectively). Alternatively, 2.5-inch drives consume approximately half the power of 3.5-inch
drives.
• The integrated dual Gigabit Ethernet controllers with IPMI 2.0 support provide high-speed
network communications. Jumbo Frames offer higher efficiency transfers for large data
packets.
• The TCP Offload Engine (TOE) feature offers higher performance for TCP/IP traffic, with less
overhead on the system processor.
• A high degree of device integration—including SAS or SATA, RAID, dual Gigabit Ethernet,
systems management and video controllers—lowers costs and frees up valuable adapter
slots.
Flexibility
The x3550 has the ability to grow with your application requirements, thanks to
• A choice of quad-core or dual-core processors with 1.6 to 3.16GHz clock rates, 1333MHz or
1066MHz FSB, and 50W to 120W maximum power draw.
• Up to 32GB of high-speed fully-buffered DDR2 system memory.
• Two available high-performance PCI-E adapter slots in all models. Optionally, if desired, the
riser card containing one of the PCI-E slots can be exchanged for a riser containing a PCI-
X/133 adapter slot.
• Installing the slotless ServeRAID-8k option upgrades the integrated ServeRAID-8k-l
controller with 256MB of low-cost, battery-backed cache to enable even higher-performance
hardware RAID support, and allows the x3550 to offer six RAID levels: RAID-0, 1, 10, 1E, 5
and 6. The optional MegaRAID 8480 controller supports up to four IBM System Storage
EXP3000 expansion units containing up to 48 SAS HDDs and 14.4TB of external storage.
• The six USB 2.0 ports are up to 40X faster
access to external HDDs (non-arrayed), optical drives, tape drives, and other USB devices.
Two ports are on the front of the unit and four are on the back.
• A choice of up to two internal 3.5-inch hot-swap SAS or simple-swap SATA II HDDs or four
2.5-inch hot-swap SAS HDDs (depending on the model) offer a variety of storage options.
The 3.5-inch SAS models provide a maximum of 600GB of internal hot-swap storage. The
2.5-inch SAS models support up to 587.2GB of hot-swap SAS storage. The 3.5-inch SATA
models provide a maximum of 2TB of internal simple-swap storage.
• Alternatively, iSCSI or Fibre Channel-attached storage can be attached using IBM System
®
Storage or TotalStorage
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than older USB 1.1 ports. This provides speedy
servers.
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protection
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