Dual Gigabit Ethernet Controllers

Leadership enterprise server with significantly lower cost of ownership in a highly available and expandable, rack-dense, 1U dual-socket server

replacing the older parallel PCI and PCI-X buses. A x16 PCIe adapter offers approximately eight ttimes the maximum throughput of a 133MHz PCI-X adapter7. (A x1 adapter offers throughput similar to a 66MHz PCI-X slot.)

There is a built-in riser card in x3550 M2 that provides a PCIe connector (x8 connector wired with x4 lanes) for an internal RAID card ( MR10i plus one USB connector reserved for an internal USB Flash memory key to support Hypervisor.. There is no internal Tape drive support in x3550 M2.

The x3550 M2 includes two integrated Broadcom 5709 Gigabit Ethernet controllers for up to

10X higher maximum throughput than a 10/100 Ethernet controller, as well as support for Jumbo Frames and TOE (TCP Offload Engine).

Jumbo Frames—those larger than the standard frame (packet) size of 1,500 bytes—can be more efficient, dramatically increasing network performance and reducing server CPU overhead. TOE helps improve overall system performance by offloading TCP/IP protocol processing from the system microprocessor to the onboard Ethernet TOE processor. There is no additional charge for this capability.

It 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.

Integrated Quad GbE Ports via Broadcom 5709 GbE Controller.

•Up to four (4) GbE ports ideal for virtualization and I/O intensive workloads

•2 ports standard plus two additional ports optional via adapter card

•Improves system performance by offloading protocol processing from CPU to a separate TOE engine

•Primary performance improvement for data copying (CPU) where CPU utilization is 90-100%

•The embedded NIC/TOE supports software iSCSI using a Microsoft iSCSI initiator

•Using a software initiator enables offloading the processing of TCP frames with the TOE engine in the adapter card but the processing of iSCI packets themselves is not hardware offloaded at the Broadcom NIC

•Broadcom hardware offloaded iSCSI (using TOE engine) of the iSCSI frames

•iSCSI and RDMA are not supported

Two Broadcom 5709 Gigabit Ethernet Controllers (one on-board and one on optional daughter card) provide four Gigabit ports supporting IEEE 802.3 for 1000Base-T, 100Base-TX, and 10Base-T applications (802.3, 802.3u, 802.3ab) through a RJ-45 connector to an Ethernet network over a CAT 5 twisted-pair cable. This controller supports PXE 2.0 remote boot, TCPIP Offload Engine (TOE), Internet SCSI (iSCSI), Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA), and jumbo frames (9KB). License key will be required to enable iSCSI and RDMA feature. There are two green LEDs on the connector: Activity LED on the upper left side and Link Status LED on the upper right side (viewed facing the connector). TOE support on Windows is available today. But it requires Windows Scalable Network Pack (SNP) installation. Linux has no plan to support TOE at this time. Please refer to TOE_RDMA_iSCSI.doc for technology details. Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is supported.

Ultra-Efficient Cooling

Strategically located fans, combined with efficient airflow paths, provide highly effective system cooling for the x3550 M2, known as Calibrated Vectored Cooling. The base server with one power supply includes six hot-swap fan packs for redundant cooling. Each pack includes two back-to-back fans with counter-rotating blades for a total of 12 fans. In addition, each power supply also contains a fan.

The system contains three cooling zones. Zone 1 (incorporating two fan packs) cools all 16 DIMM sockets, Zone 2 (two fan packs) cools the primary processor, and Zone 3 (one or two fan packs) cools the second processor (if installed).

The fans automatically adjust speeds in response to changing thermal requirements depending on the zone 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. In addition, the Bosch BMP085 altimeter works in conjunction with IMM to govern fan rotation. At high altitudes the air is thinner

7Actual throughput will depend on the adapter vendor’s implementation.

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