2 Planning, Installing, and Managing the IBM System x3950 M21.1 IBM eX4-based serversIBM eX4 technology offers a balanced system design with unique scalability,reliability, availability, and performance capabilities to take full advantage of Intel’slatest multi-core processors. By connecting four servers together, thesingle-system image can have up to 16 processor sockets (96 cores), up to 128DIMM sockets and 1 TB of RAM, 28 PCI Express slots, and 34.1 GBps ofmemory bandwidth for each 256 GB RAM server. This results in a high-capacitysystem with significant processing and I/O performance, and greater powerefficiency.The two servers based on IBM eX4 technology are: IBM System x3850 M2 IBM System x3950 M2Although they have the same technical specifications and features, the x3850 M2cannot be used to form a multinode unless you upgrade it to an IBM Systemx3950 M2 by adding the ScaleXpander Option Kit, as described in section 1.2,“Model numbers and scalable upgrade options” on page 9.1.1.1 Features of the x3950 M2 and x3850 M2 serversThe x3950 M2 and x3850 M2 look very similar, as shown in Figure 1-1.Figure 1-1 IBM System x3950 M2 and IBM System x3850 M2Front and rear panelsThe components and connectors on the front and rear of the system are shownin Figure 1-2 on page 3 and Figure 1-3 on page 4.
