Product guide

Ultrascalability combined with extreme availability
features and industry-leading performance
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and high availability. They support the latest ten-, eight-, six-, and four-core Intel
®
Xeon
®
E7
family and 7500 series processors, up to 1066MHz memory access, and up to 30MB of L3
cache to help provide you with the computing power you need to match your business needs
and growth. The new Xeon E7-8800 and E7-4800 series processors offer up to 40% greater
performance than the previous-generation Intel 7500 series processors.
In addition, the x3850 X5 and x3950 X5 use industry-standard DDR3 memory with Chipkill
™
ECC (Error Checking and Correcting) protection—for high performance and reliability. For
even higher levels of availability, the eX5 servers also offer Memory ProteXion
™
, memory
scrubbing, memory rank sparing, and selectable memory mirroring.
A dual-port integrated high-speed Gigabit Ethernet controller with TOE (TCP Offload
Engine) acceleration is standard. In addition, a dual-port 10bE virtual fabric adapter is
standard in most models. The 10GbE solution provides the benefits and flexibility of I/O
convergence in a single end-to-end solution. The x3850 offers seven high-performance PCIe
adapter slots (six available, if the 10GbE NIC is installed).
The x3850 X5 and x3950 X5 offer industry-leading scalability, including 4-processor support
(upgradeable to 8 processors / 80 cores in two chassis/nodes), up to 2TB of memory per
chassis (upgradeable to 2TB in two nodes, or 3TB with MAX5), and a choice of up to eight
2.5-inch internal Serial-Attach SCSI (SAS) or Serial ATA II (SATA II) hot-swap hard disk
drives with an internal storage capacity of 4TB per chassis (up to 16 drives and 6TB overall,
in a two-chassis configuration), or sixteen 1.8-inch solid-state drives (SSDs) with a
capacity of 3.2TB per chassis (6.4TB in two nodes).
All models include a ServeRAID-BR10i V2 controller, which supports hardware RAID-0/1/1E.
This controller is installed in a dedicated RAID slot, and can be upgraded with optional IBM
ServeRAID SAS/SATA/SSD RAID controllers, which add up to 512MB of battery-backed
cache, RAID-10/5/50 support, and optionally RAID-6/60 and full disk encryption, via SED
(Self-Encrypting Disk). The 4U size of the chassis helps you maximize your rack investments.
Up to 10 of these chassis can be installed in a single 42U rack, for a total of up to 40
processors (400 cores), 70 PCIe slots, and 80 HDDs or 160 SSDs, offering an ideal balance
of performance, storage and I/O slots per rack.
Standard in both the x3850 X5 and the x3950 X5 is the Integrated Management Module
(IMM) that enables the user to manage and control the server easily—both locally and
remotely. The IMM offers a high level of manageability that is designed to keep costs down
and the system up—even when network usage increases. The 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 IBM
OnForever™ features, such as hot-swap/redundant HDDs, power and fans; Active
Memory
™
; 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- and graphics-console redirect over LAN.
Another improvement with the new generation of X-Architecture is the replacement of legacy
BIOS with a new generation Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). UEFI provides
a more intuitive user interface and understandable event logs and better management.
With the inclusion of unique IBM service and support features such as IBM Systems
Director, IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager™, and IBM ServerGuide
™
, the
x3850/x3950 X5 is designed for maximum uptime.
If you need a balance of high-performance four-socket processing, scalability up to eight
sockets, enormous memory expansion, and large I/O capacity in a rack-dense environment,
these are the ideal systems.
Key Highlights
eX5 Design Features
eX5 design offers numerous features per chassis to boost performance and reduce product
and operating costs:
• Supports up to four Intel Xeon processors with 12MB to 30MB of L3 cache (processor
dependant), and Intel Virtualization Technology (VT) , Hyper-Threading (HT) technology,
and Turbo Boost technology.
• Supports 10-core, 8-core, or 6-core Xeon E7 family processors or 8-core, 6-core or 4-
core Xeon 7500 series processors, scalable to 8 processors in a two-chassis
configuration.
• Supports up to 2TB of DDR3 memory in a single 4U chassis/node. A two-node (8U)
configuration supports up to 4TB and doubles all other system resources as well
(HDD/SDD capacity, 10Gb/1Gb Ethernet ports, adapter slots, etc.).
• The 7143 machine type supports low-voltage 1.35V DIMMs.
• Support for a MAX5 memory expansion unit, increasing memory capacity by 50% for
memory-intensive workloads. One chassis with one MAX5 supports up to 3TB of