Product guide

Ultrascalability combined with extreme availability
features and industry-leading performance
Please see the Legal Information section for important notices and information.
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Offload; Receive Side Scaling (RSS); IPV4 TCP Chimney Offload
• VLAN insertion and extraction
• Jumbo frames up to 9000 Bytes
• Preboot eXecutive Environment (PXE) 2.0 network boot support
• Interrupt coalescing
• Load balancing and failover support including adapter fault tolerance (AFT), switch fault
tolerance (SFT), adaptive load balancing (ALB), teaming support and IEEE 802.3ad.
Note: You must have either one SFP+ transceiver or one SFP+ direct-attached cable for
each of the two 10Gb ports on the adapter.
Dual Gigabit Ethernet Controller
The eX5 systems include one integrated dual-port Broadcom 5709C Gigabit Ethernet
controller, with TOE (TCP Offload Engine) acceleration support, as well as load-balancing
and failover capabilities between the two ports.
TOE support helps improve overall system performance by offloading TCP/IP protocol
processing from the system microprocessor to the onboard Ethernet TOE processor.
The controller also supports highly secure remote power management using IPMI 2.0, plus
Wake on LAN
®
and PXE (Preboot Execution Environment) flash interface. Optional PCI
adapters offering failover and load balancing between adapters are available for added
throughput and increased system availability.
Hot-Swap/Redundant Components
System availability is maximized through the extensive use of hot-swap and redundant
components, including:
• Hot-swap redundant hard disk drives and solid-state drives
• Hot-swap redundant cooling fans (three redundant pairs)
• Hot-swap redundant power supplies
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Ultra-Efficient Cooling
Six strategically located hot-swap/redundant fans, combined with efficient airflow paths,
provide highly effective system cooling for the x3850 X5 and x3950 X5 systems, known as
Calibrated Vectored Cooling. The fans are arranged to cool three separate zones, left,
center, and right, with one 120mm fan each in the left and center zones and a pair of
redundant 30mm fans in the third zone. The left and center zones are redundant with fans
contained in the removable power supply units.
The fans automatically adjust speeds in response to changing thermal requirements,
depending on the zone, redundancy, and internal temperatures. When the temperature inside
the server increases, the fans speed up to maintain the proper ambient temperature. When
the temperature returns to a normal operating level, the fans return to their default speed.
Why not simply run the fans at 100% capacity all the time? For several good reasons: to
reduce the ambient noise, reduce the wear-and-tear on the fans and reduce the server power
draw. The reduction in ambient noise and power draw may be relatively minor for a single
server, but if you have a larger number of systems the aggregate savings in power and noise
pressure can be significant.
In addition, the server uses hexagonal ventilation holes in the chassis. Hexagonal holes
can be grouped more densely than round holes, providing greater airflow through the system
cover.
This cooling scheme is important because newer, more powerful processors generate a
significant amount of heat, and heat must be controlled for the system to function properly.
Light Path Diagnostics
Light path diagnostics enables a technician to quickly identify and locate a failed or failing
system component, such as a specific memory DIMM. (Monitored components include
processors, memory, power supplies, fans, HDDs, adapters, and voltage regulator modules
(VRMs), plus system temperature.) This enables quick replacement of the component, which
helps increase server uptime and lower operating costs.
The front of the server has an LED indicator light to show possible component failures. If the
front LED indicates an error condition, by pressing a button on the front of the server an LED
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Actual throughput will depend on the adapter vendor’s implementation.
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At 220V both power supplies are redundant; at 110V only limited configurations are redundant.