IBM x3690 X5 Product Manual

Also see for System x3690 X5: Implementation guide Installation and user guide At-a-glance reference guide At-a-glance guide Manual

Contents

IBM System x3690 X5 2Key featuresThe x3690 X5 is an outstanding 2U two-socket mission-critical server, offering outstanding performance,superior reliability, and fault-tolerant memory characteristics.IBM® has been designing and implementing servers under the X-Architecture® name since 2001. IBMeX5 technology represents the fifth generation of enterprise servers based on the same design principleIBM began with in 1997: to offer systems that are expandable, offer “big iron” reliability, availability, andserviceability (RAS) features, with extremely competitive price/performance on an Intel Xeonprocessor-based system.Scalability and performanceThe x3690 X5 offers numerous features to boost performance, improve scalability, and reduce costs:The x3690 X5 supports up to two high-performance Intel Xeon E7 family allowing you to upgrade asbusiness needs require.Supports the Intel Xeon E7-2800, E7-4800 and E7-8800 families of high performance processors, upto 10 cores each, offering superior system performanceIntel Turbo Boost Technology dynamically turns off unused processor cores and increases the clockspeed of the cores in use, by up to three model frequencies. For example, with 7-10 cores active, a2.4 GHz E7-2870 10-core processor can run the cores at up to 2.53 GHz. With 5-6 cores active, it canrun those cores at 2.67 GHz; with only 1-4 cores active, it can run those cores at 2.8 GHzEach processor includes two integrated memory controllers, to reduce memory bottlenecks andimprove performance. Memory access is at up to 1066 MHz frequency, depending on the processormodel and memory used.The MAX5 V2 adds an additional four memory controllers for a total of eight memory controllers tomaximize memory parallelism and performance.In processors implementing Hyper-Threading technology, each core has two threads capable ofrunning an independent process. Thus, an 8-core processor can run 16 threads concurrently.Intel’s Virtualization Technology (VT) integrates hardware-level virtualization hooks that allowoperating system vendors to better utilize the hardware for virtualization workloads.Intel QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) technology for processor-to-processor connectivity and IntelScalable Memory Interconnect (SMI) processor-to-memory connectivity:Intel QPI link topology at up to 6.4 Gbps with four QPI links per CPUIntel SMI link topology at up to 6.4 Gbps with four SMI links per CPUUp to 32 dual inline memory modules (DIMMs) in the base system (16 on the system planar and 16on an optional memory mezzanine inside the server), plus an additional 32 DIMMs with an optional1U MAX5 V2 memory expansion unit, for a total of 64 DIMM sockets.Support for 32 GB DIMMs for a maximum of 2 TB per x3690 X5 with MAX5 V2The use of solid-state drives (SSDs) instead of, or along with, traditional spinning drives (HDDs) cansignificantly improve I/O performance. An SSD can support up to 100 times more I/O operations persecond (IOPS) than a typical HDD.Up to 24 1.8-inch SSD bays, or up to 16 2.5-inch bays together with the option of an optical drive,provide a flexible and scalable all-in-one platform to meet your increasing demands.