IBM To Offer Lower Priced Servers
IBM is aiming to take on competitors by offering a more affordable Power Systems server and storage product range later this month.
The company is rolling out new servers based on its Power architecture with the Power Express 710 starting at $5,947. IBM says its new server is competitively priced to Oracle's Sparc servers and HP's Itanium integrity servers.
The new server range includes the Power Express 710, 720, 730 and 740 models. These are based on IBM's Power architecture, and come with IBM's Power7+ chips. Buyers can purchase optional PowerVM, and processors can be up to 16 cores. The range will run on AIX, Red Had Enterprise Linux 6.2 or Suse Linux Enterprise Server 11.
The servrers are designed for SMB (small- and medium-sized businesses) and growth markets and will be available by February 20.
| Configuration options | Model 8231-E1D |
|---|---|
| POWER7+ processor modules - one per system | 4-core 3.6 GHz or 6-core 4.2 GHz or 8-core 4.2 GHz |
| Sockets | 1 |
| Level 2 (L2) cache | 256 KB per core |
| Level 3 (L3) cache | 10 MB per core |
| Memory | 8 GB to 256 GB of RDIMM DDR3 Active Memory Expansion |
| Solid-state Drives (SSD) | Up to six SFF drives or |
| Disk drives | Up to six SFF SAS drives |
| Disk capacity | Up to 5.4 TB |
| Media bays | Slimline for DVD-RAM Half height for tape driveor removable disk |
| I/O | |
|---|---|
| PCI Adapter slots | Five PCI Express Generation2 8x low profile |
| Standard Ethernet | Four Ethernet 10/100/1000 Mbps ports |
| Integrated SAS controller | One controller for SAS DASD/SSD w/ RAID 10 and DVD-RAM Optional protected 175 MB cache with RAID 5, 6 |
| High-performance PCI adapters | 8 Gigabit Fibre Channel 2-port 16 Gbps Fibre Channel 2-port 10GbE RoCE Dual port 10 Gigabit Ethernet Dual port 10 Gigabit Fibre Channel over Ethernet Dual port QDR Infiniband 6Gbps SAS RAID controller |
| Other integrated ports | Three USB, two HMC, two system ports |
| GX slots | One GX++ (not available with 4-core processor) |
| PowerVM technologies | |
|---|---|
| POWER Hypervisor | Virtual Machines, LPAR, Dynamic LPAR, Virtual LAN (Memory-to-memory interpartition communication) |
| PowerVM Express Edition (optional) | Up to three partitions on the server; virtualized disk and optical devices (VIOS); Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM); Shared Dedicated Capacity |
| PowerVM Standard Edition (optional) | PowerVM Express Edition plus Micro-Partitioning with up to 20 micropartitions per processor; Multiple Shared Processor Pools |
| PowerVM Enterprise Edition (optional) | PowerVM Standard Edition plus Live Partition Mobility (LPM) and Active Memory Sharing (AMS) |
| RAS features | ECC memory with Chipkill Processor Instruction Retry Alternate Processor Recovery Service processor with fault monitoring Hot-plug disk bays Hot-plug and redundant power supplies and cooling fans Dynamic component Deallocation |
|---|---|
| Operating systems | AIX IBM i Linux for POWER |
| High availability | IBM PowerHA family |
| Power requirements | 100 V to 240 V ac, single phase |
| System dimensions | Rack Drawer: 3.4 in. H ? 17.6 in. W ? 28.6 in. D (86 mm ? 447 mm ? 728 mm); weight 62 lbs (28.2 kg) |
| Warranty (limited) | 3 year Limited Warranty, on site for selected components; CRU (customer-replaceable unit) for all other units (varies by country), Next Business Day 9x5 (excluding holidays), warranty service upgrades and maintenance are available |
