IBM X3500 - Manual

A stable, long-life, dual-socket, dual- and quad-core SMP
server, offering high-performance, massive capacity and
outstanding availability

Please see the Legal Information section for important notices and information.

1

Product Guide

December 2007

IBM

System x3500

Product Overview

CONTENTS

Product Overview

1

Selling Features

1

Key Features

3

Key Options

9

x3500 Images

11

x3500 Specifications

12

The Bottom Line

14

For More Information

16

Legal Information

16

Outstanding performance, capacity and availability

[

Suggested uses:

Workgroups of medium-to-large corporations; remote offices; fast growing small

businesses]

In a distributed computing environment, servers are spread across many locations; therefore, as limited
resources challenge IT management high availability is crucial. The

dual-socket

IBM

®

System

x3500

,

incorporating IBM

X-Architecture

™

features, delivers the superior power and availability needed by small

businesses and those with branch or remote locations. The x3500 supports the latest

quad-

and

dual-

core

Intel

®

Xeon

™

processors, designed with up to a leading-edge

1333MHz

front-side bus (FSB),

64-bit

extensions

(

EM64T

), and either

4MB

(dual-core) or

8MB

or

12MB

(quad-core) of L2 cache, to help

provide you with the computing power you need to match your business needs and growth. In addition, the
x3500 uses industry-standard

fully buffered

667MHz

memory with

Chipkill

™

ECC

(Error Checking and

Correcting) protection—for high performance and reliability. For even higher levels of availability, the
x3500 also offers a choice of optional online hot-spare memory or memory mirroring.

Dual

integrated high-

speed

Gigabit Ethernet

controllers are standard, as are high-performance adapter slots (

PCI-E x8

and

x4

and

PCI-X/133

).

All models offer impressive scalability, including dual-processor support and up to

48GB

of memory. Some

models support

eight

high-performance

3.5-inch

hot-swap Serial-Attach

SCSI

(SAS) with an internal

storage capacity of up to

2.4TB

1

,

or

eight hot-swap 3.5-inch Serial ATA II

(SATA II) hard disk drives with

a total capacity of up to

6.0TB

. Other models support

twelve 2.5-inch

hot-swap SAS

drives (up to

1.76TB

). For additional performance and high availability, the x3500 includes the

ServeRAID-8k

controller

standard

, with

256MB

of battery-backed cache, providing

RAID-0/1/10/1E/5/6

support. The x3500 ships

as a tower unit; an optional rack conversion kit turns the x3500 into a

5U

rack-mounted server to help save

precious data center floor space.

Standard in the x3500 is a

Baseboard Management Controller (BMC)

that enables users to manage

and control the server easily—both locally and remotely. This high level of manageability is designed to
keep costs down and the system up—even when network usage increases. The built-in,

externally

viewable light path diagnostics panel

enables quick servicing of the system if a problem develops.

These advanced features help maximize network availability by increasing uptime, as do

hot-

swap/redundant

HDDs

,

power

and

fans

;

Active Memory

™

; integrated

RAID

;

temperature-controlled

fans

with

Calibrated Vectored Cooling

™

; industry-standard

IPMI 2.0

support, including

highly secure

remote power control

and

Serial over LAN

; as well as

text-console redirect over LAN

.

With the inclusion of unique IBM service and support features such as

light path diagnostics, IBM

Director

,

IBM ServerGuide

™

and

support for the optional

IBM Remote Supervisor Adapter II SlimLine

,

the x3500 is equally well designed for a locally managed data center environment as for a remotely
managed or stand-alone environment, while offering maximum availability.

For a balance of high-performance dual-core, dual-socket processing, high availability and vast internal
storage, the x3500 is the ideal system.

Selling Features

Price/Performance

The x3500 offers numerous features to help boost performance and reduce product and operating costs:

•

Up to

two multi-core

Xeon processors with high-end

1066MHz

or

1333MHz

front side bus and either

12MB,

8MB,

or

4MB

(processor-specific) of integrated Level 2 cache per processor offer superior

performance capable of tackling the toughest jobs.

64-bit extensions

provide the flexibility to run 32-

bit and 64-bit applications concurrently.

•

Low-voltage processors

draw less power and produce less waste heat than high-voltage processors,

thus helping to reduce data center energy costs. Some

dual-core

Xeon processors use only

65W

. This

is half the wattage consumed by older 130W processors. On a per-core basis, the

80W

quad-core

processors are even more economical, consuming only

20W

per core

, vs. 32.5W per core for the 65W

1

GB equals 1,000,000,000 bytes and TB equals 1,000,000,000,000 bytes when referring to hard disk drive capacity. Accessible

capacity may be less.