IBM® has been designing and implementing chipsets under the X-Architecture™name since 2001. eX4 technology represents the fourth generation of products based on the same design principle IBM began with in 1997: to offer systems that are expandable, offer “big iron” reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) features, with extremely competitive price/performance on an Intel® Xeon® processor-based system.
1The eX4 technology is primarily designed around three major workloads. These workloads are
2database servers, server consolidation using virtualization services, and Enterprise Resource Planning (application and database) servers.
3If you are adopting industry-standard Xeon EM64T servers for running business critical
11applications, the systems that run these applications need the type of technology designed into IBM’s eX4 technology systems. The eX4 chipset represents a $100M+ investment in designing
12a flagship offering that can harness the power of 4-socket-and-up 64-bit x86 (x64) Xeon
14processors. The eX4 design includes two 4U 4-socketrack-optimized chassis (x3850 M2 and x3950 M2) with the ability to scale up to 16 sockets and up to 96 cores. In fact, you can start
16 with a single-node x3850 M2 chassis, and by adding a ScaleXpander Option Kit, you can turn it into an x3950 M2, ready to expand into a multi-node configuration providing more flexibility in
19 | deploying your scalable solution than ever before. |
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19The x3850 M2 now offers selected models integrated with VMware ESXi 3.5 preloaded on an IBM 4GB USB 2.0 Flash Key. It operates in a diskless configuration, offers a smaller memory footprint, extremely high performance, and stronger security, making getting a system up and running in a virtualized environment faster and easier than ever before.
IBM X-Architecture pioneered XpandOnDemand™ (“pay as you grow”) scalability, which allows chassis to be simply cabled together to form larger scale-up systems. This unique capability allows IBM to sell a large SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) system at entry price points. Other Intel OEMs can’t match this capability. If they offer a 16-socket product at all, they require you to start out with a 16-socket chassis, whether you’ll ever grow into it or not. With XpandOnDemand, you can start small, with a 4- or 8-socket configuration, and later expand as your needs change, without requiring you to buy more than you need up-front or throw away parts later as you expand.
IBM’s eX4 technology-based systems are the ideal solution for scale-up database-serving applications on Microsoft® Windows® with Microsoft SQL Server® or IBM DB2®, as well as Linux® with Oracle 9i RAC and 10g, or IBM DB2. Database hosting demands ultimate server reliability features, and once installed, they grow and grow. The eX4 design offers two strong selling arguments against the competition: lower initial purchase price, and potentially much lower long- term TCO.
Another strong application area for the eX4-based systems is enterprise server consolidation activities. Larger servers have more processor, memory and I/O resources, which make maximum use of any applicable virtual machine software licensing fees and deliver superior system utilization levels. The name of the game in consolidation activities is to deploy the fewest new servers possible and help IT staff manage more images with the same or fewer overall people.
One of the fastest growing application areas for eX4-based systems is ERP workloads, including SAP and Oracle. eX4-based systems can offer considerable savings over UNIX deployments, using our certified solution stacks on either Windows or Linux.
The 4-socketeX4 servers are designed to protect your data with high performance, high reliability, and high availability. They support the latest six-, quad- and dual-coreIntel® Xeon™ processors, designed with high-performance quad 1066MHz front-side buses (FSB), 64-bit extensions (EM64T), and either 8MB (dual-core); 4MB, 6MB, or 8MB (quad-core); or 9MB of L2 cache; 8MB, 12MB or 16MB (six-core) of L3 cache, and up to 256MB of L4 cache per chassis (all models), to help provide you with the computing power you need to match your
