Leadership enterprise server with significantly lower cost of ownership in a highly available and
expandable, rack-dense, 1U dual-socket server
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• Two available high-performance PCIe x16 adapter slots in all models. Optionally, if desired,
the riser card containing one of the PCIe slots can be exchanged for a riser containing a PCI-
X/133 adapter slot.
• Installing the ServeRAID MR10i option upgrades the basic ServeRAID functionality
controller with 256MB of low-cost, battery-backed cache to enable even higher-performance
hardware RAID support, and allows the x3550 M2 to offer six RAID levels: RAID-0, 1, 10, 1E,
5 and 6. The optional ServeRAID MR10M controller supports up to four IBM System
Storage™ EXP3000 expansion units containing up to 48 SAS HDDs and 14.4TB of external
storage.
• The four USB 2.0 ports (two front, two rear) are up to 40X faster2 than older USB 1.1 ports.
This provides speedy access to external HDDs (non-arrayed), optical drives, tape drives, and
other USB devices. Two ports are on the front of the unit and two are on the back.
• A choice of up to six 2.5-inch hot-swap SAS/SATA HDDs or solid-state drives or eight 2.5-
inch drives and one internal tape drive offer a variety of storage options. The SAS and SATA
models provide a maximum of 1.8GB of internal hot-swap storage.
• Alternatively, iSCSI or Fibre Channel-attached storage can be attached using IBM System
Storage™ servers.
Manageability
Powerful systems management features simplify local and remote management of the x3550 M2:
• The x3550 M2 includes the IMM to monitor server availability, perform Predictive Failure
Analysis, etc., and trigger IBM Systems Director alerts. The IMM enables service personnel to
use sophisticated diagnostic tools, such as light path diagnostics, to resolve problems quickly.
• Integrated industry-standard Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) next-generation
BIOS. New capabilities include:
Human readable event logs – no more beep codes
Complete setup solution by allowing adapter configuration function to be moved into
UEFI
Complete out-of-band coverage by Advance Settings Utility to simplify remote setup
• Integrated Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 1.2 support.
• Integrated IPMI 2.0 support alerts IBM Systems Director to anomalous environmental factors,
such as voltage and thermal conditions. It also supports highly secure remote power
control using data encryption.
• IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager™, an IBM-exclusive, is designed to take
advantage of new system power management features, by providing power monitoring and
power capping features.
• Text Console Redirection support allows the administrator to remotely view x3550 M2 text
messages over Serial or LAN.
• The completely redesigned IBM Systems Director is included for proactive systems
management. IBM Systems Director comes with a portfolio of tools, including Management
Processor Assistant, Rack Manager, RAID Manager, Update Assistant and Software
Distribution. In addition, IBM Systems Director offers extended systems management tools for
additional server management and increased availability. When a problem is encountered,
IBM Systems Director can issue administrator alerts via e-mail, pager, and other methods.
• An optional Virtual Media Key provides additional systems management capabilities, including
Web-based out-of-band control; virtual floppy and optical drive support; Windows “blue
screen” error capture; LDAP and SSL support; and remote redirection of PCI video, text,
keyboard and mouse. And it does all this without consuming a valuable adapter slot.
Availability and Serviceability
The x3550 M2 provides many features to simplify serviceability and increase system uptime:
• x3550 M2 servers use Chipkill ECC memory protection3. Chipkill memory is up to 16X better
than standard ECC memory at correcting memory errors. This can help reduce downtime
caused by memory errors.
• The x3550 M2 offers selectable memory mirroring for redundancy in the event of a non-
correctable memory failure
• Toolless cover removal provides easy access to upgrades and serviceable parts. Similarly,
2 Data transfer rates may be less than the maximum possible.
3 Chipkill protection is supported with x4 DDR-3 DIMMs, but not x8 DIMMs.