Product guide

An affordable single-socket, quad-core server with high performance
and data protection for small, medium, and large businesses
Please see the Legal Information section for important notices and information.
16
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
• Support for highly available hardware-based RAID-1/1E arrays standard, without consuming
an adapter slot
• Hot-swap SAS, hot-swap SATA, or simple-swap SATA hard disk drives, for quick and simple
installation and replacement of drives
• Ultra-efficient cooling
• Second hot-swap/redundant power supply (model-dependant or via CTO)
• PFA support for memory, voltage regulator module (VRD), hot-swap HDDs, and fans
• Optional tower-to-rack conversion kit
Server Comparison Chart
The following table shows the suggested uses for the respective IBM System x tower servers, including comparisons of the uses for
which each server is best suited:
Theme Key Workloads
Scalability
Floating Point
Performance
Memory
Throughput
Integer
Performance
I/O and Storage
Density
High Availability
Systems
Management
Security
Distributed
Deployment
x3250
M3
x3550
M3
x3620
M3
x3630
M3
x3650
M3
x3690
X5
x3755
M3
x3850
X5
x3950
X5
Cluster / HPC
3 1 1 2 2 1 3 3 3 3









Modeling & Simulation
2 1 1 1 3 1 3 2 3 3









High Performance DB
2 2 1 1 1 3 2 2 3 3









Business Intelligence
2 1 1 1 2 1 2 2 1 3









Search
3 1 1 1 2 1 3 3 1 2









Content
2 2 2 2 2 1 3 3 2 2









Communities
1 2 2 2 1 1 2 3 2 2









Commerce
2 1 1 1 2 1 1 2 1 2









Collaboration
2 3 2 3 2 1 2 3 2 2









ERP/SCM
1 2 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 2









CRM
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 3










Best
Hosted Client
1 3 2 1 2 2 1 1 2 2








Point of Sale
3 3 3 2 1 3 1 1 1 1
Branch Office
2 3 3 3 2 2 1 1 2 1










Better
Virtualization
1 2 2 2 1 2 1 1 2 3









Business Continuity
2 3 3 3 1 2 2 1 2 2









Database
2 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 2 3










Good
Email/Collaboration
2 3 2 1 2 2 1 1 2 2









Security
2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 3









Web Serving
3 2 2 2 3 1 2 1 3 3









File & Print
2 3 2 3 1 2 2 1 3 3









Rack-Optimized ServersRequirements
Infrastructure
Applications
Web 2.0 /
Web 3D
HPC
Business
Applications
1
2
3
Important
Nice to Have
Can do without