IBM System x3550 M2 User's Guide download pdf

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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Product Guide

December 2009

IBM System x3550 M2

Product Overview

CONTENTS

Product Overview

Selling Features

Key Features

Key Options

x3550 M2 Images

x3550 M2 Specifications

The Bottom Line

Server Comparison

For More Information

Legal Information

Outstanding innovation in only 1U

Suggested Uses: All sectors requiring highly available, energy-efficient, rack-optimized solution

for physical and virtual intensive commercial environments like eBusiness/eCommerce,

collaboration, virtualization, database, and enterprise resource planning applications.

Your challenge is to do more with less—serve more Web pages, handle more secure

connections, support more e-mail users. You need to reduce the costs of doing business and

improve the service you deliver to your customers while lowering your overall risk. The dual-

socket IBM

System x3550 M2 can reduce your costs with its new energy smart design. It can

improve service with reduced operational complexity and increased management functionality. It

will lower your IT risk with the resiliency that comes from no single point of failure. And like all

IBM servers, the x3550 M2 offers you the trust that comes from the IBM global reach, service and

support.

The x3550 M2 is not simply an upgrade to a previous server. It is one of our new generation of

X-Architecture servers. It is a game-changing, completely redesigned rack server using

significantly less power with unified systems management tools, leadership reliability, availability,

serviceability features and broad systems flexibility housed in a compact 1U mechanical package.

The x3550 M2 features Intel

Xeon

5500 Series 4-core and 2-core processors and either 8MB

or 4MB of shared cache, to help provide you with the computing power you need to match your

business needs and growth. This new line of Intel processors delivers unprecedented intelligent

performance with features like adaptive performance for applications and environments, turbo

boost and hyper-threading technology, and integrated power gates and automated power

management.

The x3550M2 uses up to 16 DIMMs with 128GB of registered 1333MHz DDR3 memory with

Chipkill

™

ECC (Error Checking and Correcting) protection—for high performance and reliability.

For even higher levels of availability, the x3550M2 also offers online memory mirroring. Up to 4

integrated high-speed Gigabit Ethernet controllers with TOE (TCP Offload Engine) and Jumbo

Frame support are available, as are two high-performance adapter slots (PCIe x16). The

x3550M2 offers an optional embedded hypervisor to manage your virtual workloads.

The x3550 M2 offers a choice of up to six high-performance hot-swap hard disk drives with an

internal storage capacity of 3.0TB (six 2.5-inch hot-swap Serial-Attached SCSI (SAS) or SATA

HDDs) Optional solid-state drives are also available to keep power low and improve resiliency and

offer up to 300GB of storage. The server supports a choice of four IBM ServeRAID

storage

controllers which provide broad levels of hardware-based RAID solutions. The ultradense 1U

form factor allows businesses to increase their computing power and spread their workload

without outgrowing their current data center. Up to 42 of these 1U servers can be installed in a

single 42U rack, for a total of up to 84 processors and 336 processor cores, offering tremendous

deployment flexibility. Optional Advanced Connectivity Technology (ACT) interconnect cabling

reduces cable clutter and cost and minimizes installation time when interconnecting many rack-

mounted servers.

Standard in the x3550 M2 is the Integrated Management Module (IMM) that enables the user to

manage and control the server easily—both locally and remotely. In conjunction with the IMM, the

x3550 M2 comes with an altitude sensor (altimeter) that governs fan rotation based on

altitude, to help lower your energy consumption. The IMM offers a high level of manageability that

is designed to keep costs down and the system up—even when network usage increases. IBM’s

innovative pop-out/drop-down light path diagnostics panel enables quick servicing of the

system if a problem develops. These advanced features help maximize network availability by

increasing uptime, as do hot simple-swap solid-state drives; hot-swap/redundant SAS or

SATA HDDs, redundant ultra-efficient power supplies and fan modules; Active Memory

™

;

integrated RAID; temperature-controlled fans with Calibrated Vectored Cooling

™

; IPMI 2.0

support, including highly secure remote power control and Serial over LAN; as well as text-

console redirect over LAN.

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