Datasheet

Ultrascalability combined with extreme availability
features and industry-leading performance
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RDMA, and iSCSI acceleration
• Fast I/O — PCIe x16 (16Gbps) and x8 (8Gbps) Gen 2 adapter slots
Flexibility
• Scale up or scale out — Scalable on demand, from 2 to 8 processors, 8 to 64 processor
cores, 7 to 14 adapter slots, and 32 to 128 DIMMs (using two chassis); or 2 to 4 processors, 8
to 32 processor cores, 7 adapter slots, and 32 to 64 DIMMs (using one chassis and MAX5)
• FlexNode partitioning — Allows dynamically repartitioning the system at the node level
• Huge memory capacity — 1TB of DDR3 memory, with 64 DIMM slots per chassis , plus
another 512GB in 32 DIMM slots in a MAX5 expansion unit; expandable to 2TB of RAM,
using QPI scaling and 2 chassis, or 3TB using 2 chassis and 2 MAX5 units
• Integrated flash drive, preloaded with a hypervisor for “instant” virtualization (standard on
selected x3950 X5 models, optional on others)
• A choice of 8 2.5-inch hot-swap SAS/SATA HDDs or 16 1.8-inch hot-swap SSDs internally
(per chassis); up to 16 HDDs or 32 SSDs in a 2-chassis configuration)
• Optional IBM 160GB, 320GB, or 640GB High IOPS SSD Adapters for extremely high IOPS
and bandwidth storage
• High-performance external I/O expansion — Eight 480Mbps USB 2.0 ports (two front, four
rear, two internal)
• Hardware-based RAID-0/1/1E support standard in most models; optional slotless RAID
support for RAID-10/5/50/6/60 (up to two ServeRAID controllers in a multi-chassis
configuration)
• Six available PCIe slots (1 x 16GBps, 5 x 8GBps, 1 x 4Gbps) per chassis in most models, (12
total slots in a 2-chassis configuration)
• Optional optical drive
Manageability, Serviceability and Availability
• IBM Systems Director systems management software, including:
• IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager
• IBM Service and Support Manager
• Integrated Management Module (IMM):
 IPMI 2.0 compliance, including highly secure remote power control
 Text console redirection systems management standard
 Supports LDAP and SSL industry standards
• Active Memory protection:
 Advanced Chipkill ECC memory correction
 Memory ProteXion
 Spare rank memory
 Memory mirroring
 Memory scrubbing
• Hardware-based RAID-1/1E disk mirroring standard in a dedicated slot; optional RAID-
10/5/50/6/60 highly available arrays
• Ultra-efficient cooling incorporating Calibrated Vectored Cooling features
• Hot-swap HDDs or SSDs
• Hot-swap/redundant power supplies
• Hot-swap/redundant cooling
• Light path diagnostics (front LED panel, drop-down light path panel)
• PFA support for processors, memory, PCIe slots, VRMs, power supplies, fans, hard disk
drives, and solid-state drives
• Toolless chassis and toolless slide design; integrated Cable Management Arm simplify
installation and removal of the server from the rack
Server Comparison Chart
The following table shows the suggested uses for the respective IBM System x rack-optimized servers, including comparisons of the
uses for which each server is best suited: