Technical information

IBM Europe, Middle East, and Africa Hardware
Announcement ZG14-0098
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At least one PCIe Ethernet adapter is required on the server by IBM to ensure proper
manufacture, test, and support of the server. One of the x8 PCIe slots is used for
this required adapter, identified as the C10 slot.
The new servers are smarter about energy efficiency for cooling the PCIe adapter
environment. They sense which IBM PCIe adapters are installed in their PCIe slots,
and if an adapter requires higher levels of cooling, they automatically speed up
fans to increase airflow across the PCIe adapters. In contrast, POWER7® servers
required the user to enter a "non-acoustic mode" command to speed up the fans.
Note that faster fans increase the sound level of the server. Higher wattage PCIe
adapters include the PCIe3 SAS adapters, PCIe2 SAS adapters, and SSD/flash PCIe
adapters (#EJ0J, #EJ0M, #EL3B, #EJ0L, #ESA1, #ESA2, #ESA3, and #5913).
IBM is also introducing a gzip acceleration adapter (#EJ12). This PCIe adapter
incorporates the latest in FPGA technology to provide significant performance
improvements for customers running workloads such as IBM WebSphere®, which
require frequent gzip compressions and decompressions. Customers running Java
workloads using java/util/gzip will also see impressive performance improvements.
This feature is particularly effective for workloads requiring transfer of large buffers.
Utilizing this adapter can reduce both storage requirements and network congestion
in a customer's environment. This feature is only supported in AIX.
SAS bays and storage backplane options
Three backplane options provide a great deal of flexibility and capability. One of
these three must be configured:
• Storage Backplane 12 SFF-3 Bays/DVD Bay (#EJ0N)
• Features EJ0N and EJ0S (split backplane)
• Storage Backplane 18 SFF-3 Bays/eight 1.8-inch SSD bays/DVD Bay/Dual IOA
with Write Cache and Easy Tier® functionality (#EJ0P)
Each of the three backplane options provides SFF-3 SAS bays in the system unit.
These 2.5-inch or small form factor (SFF) SAS bays can contain SAS drives (HDD
or SSD) mounted on a Gen 3 tray or carrier. Thus the drives are designated SFF-3.
SFF-1 or SFF-2 drives do not fit in an SFF-3 bay. All SFF-3 bays support concurrent
maintenance or "hot plug" capability.
Each of the three backplane options uses leading-edge, integrated SAS RAID
controller technology designed and patented by IBM. A custom-designed PowerPC®
based ASIC chip is the basis of these SAS RAID controllers and provides industry-
leading RAID 5 and RAID 6 performance levels, especially for SSD. Internally, 13
(no cache) or 16 (with cache) 6Gb SAS ports are implemented and provide plenty of
bandwidth. Similar SAS RAID technology was first introduced with the PCIe Gen 3
SAS controllers, features EJ0J and EJ0L. The integrated SAS controllers are placed in
dedicated slots and do not reduce the number of available PCIe slots.
The feature EJ0N storage backplane option provides twelve SFF-3 bays, one SAS
controller with zero write cache, and a DVD drive bay.
By optionally adding the feature EJ0S split backplane feature, a second integrated
SAS controller with no write cache is provided and the twelve SSF-3 bays are
logically divided into two sets of six bays. Each SAS controller independently runs
one of the six-bay sets of drives.
The feature EJ0P storage backplane option has expanded function compared to
the feature EJ0N backplane. Feature EJ0P provides eighteen SSF-3 bays; a pair
of integrated SAS controllers, each with 1.8 GB physical (effectively up to 7.2 GB
with compression) write cache; a DVD bay; two SAS ports enabled for attaching an
external feature 5887 EXP24S Disk Drawer; an eight-bay, 1.8-inch SSD Cage; and
Easy Tier functionality. The SAS ports are indicated by the EJ0Z feature and must
be ordered with feature EJ0P. The SAS ports are physically mounted on the rear of
the server and use up one PCIe x8 slot. The SSD cage is indicated by feature EJTM
feature and must also be ordered with feature EJ0P.