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Leadership enterprise server with significantly lower cost of ownership in a highly available and
expandable, rack-dense, 1U dual-socket server
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Data transfer rates depend on many factors and are often less than the maximum possible.
Please see the Legal Information section for important notices and information.
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
®
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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.
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The 3Gbps
(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
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