Front cover Planning, Installing, and Managing the IBM System x3950 M2 Understand the IBM System x3950 M2 and IBM x3850 M2 Learn the technical details of these high-performance servers See how to configure, install, manage multinode complexes David Watts Jens Reizel Paul Tan Kevin Galloway ibm.com/redbooks International Technical Support Organization Planning, Installing, and Managing the IBM System x3950 M2 November 2008 SG24-7630-00 Note: Before using this information and the product it supports, read the information in “Notices” on page ix. First Edition (November 2008) This edition applies to the following systems: IBM System x3950 M2, machine types 7141 and 7233 IBM System x3850 M2, machine types 7141 and 7233 © Copyright International Business Machines Corporation 2008. All rights reserved. Note to U.S. Government Users Restricted Rights -- Use, duplication or disclosure restricted by GSA ADP Schedule Contract with IBM Corp. Contents Notices . ix Trademarks . x Preface . xiii The team that wrote this book . xiii Become a published author . xv Comments welcome. xvi Chapter 1. Technical overview . 1 1.1 IBM eX4-based servers. 2 1.1.1 Features of the x3950 M2 and x3850 M2 servers. 2 1.1.2 x3950 M2: scalable hardware components. 7 1.2 Model numbers and scalable upgrade options . 9 1.2.1 Finding country-specific model information. 10 1.2.2 x3850 M2 model information. 10 1.2.3 x3950 M2 model information. 11 1.2.4 Scalable upgrade option for x3850 M2 . 11 1.3 Multinode capabilities . 14 1.4 x3950 M2 Windows Datacenter models . 15 1.4.1 IBM Datacenter Unlimited Virtualization offering. 16 1.4.2 IBM Datacenter Unlimited Virtualization with High Availability . 16 1.4.3 Upgrading to Datacenter Edition . 17 1.4.4 Datacenter multinode configurations. 19 1.4.5 Datacenter cluster configurations . 19 1.5 Integrated virtualization: VMware ESXi . 19 1.5.1 Key features of VMware ESXi. 20 1.5.2 VMware ESXi on x3850 M2 . 21 1.5.3 Comparing ESXi to other VI3 editions. 22 1.5.4 VMware ESXi V3.5 licensing. 25 1.5.5 Support for applications running on VMware ESX and ESXi . 26 1.6 IBM fourth generation XA-64e chipset . 27 1.6.1 Hurricane 4 . 29 1.6.2 XceL4v dynamic server cache . 30 1.6.3 PCI Express I/O bridge chip . 30 1.6.4 High-speed memory buffer chips . 30 1.6.5 Ranks . 31 1.6.6 Comparing IBM eX4 to X3 technologies . 31 1.7 Processors . 33 © Copyright IBM Corp. 2008. All rights reserved. iii 1.8 Memory subsystem . 39 1.9 SAS controller and ports . 42 1.10 PCI Express subsystem . 43 1.11 Networking . 44 1.11.1 Main features . 44 1.11.2 Redundancy features . 45 1.12 Systems management features. 47 1.12.1 Light path diagnostics . 47 1.12.2 BMC service processor . 48 1.12.3 Remote Supervisor Adapter II. 49 1.12.4 Active Energy Manager. 51 1.13 Trusted Platform Module and where used . 51 Chapter 2. Product positioning . 53 2.1 Focus market segments and target applications. 54 2.2 Positioning the IBM x3950 M2 and x3850 M2. 56 2.2.1 Overview of scale-up, scale-out . 56 2.2.2 IBM BladeCenter and iDataPlex . 57 2.3 Comparing x3850 M2 to x3850 . 59 2.4 Comparing x3950 M2 to x3950 . 62 2.5 System scalability . 64 2.6 Operating system scalability . 66 2.6.1 Scaling VMware ESX . 68 2.6.2 Scaling Microsoft Windows Server 2003. 73 2.6.3 Scaling Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V . 75 2.6.4 Scaling Linux server operating systems . 76 2.7 Application scalability . 79 2.7.1 Microsoft SQL Server 2005. 80 2.7.2 Microsoft SQL Server 2008. 83 2.8 Scale-up or scale-out . 84 2.8.1 Scale-up . 84 2.8.2 Scale-out . 85 Chapter 3. Hardware configuration . 89 3.1 Processor subsystem . 90 3.1.1 Processor options . 91 3.1.2 Installation of processor options . 93 3.1.3 Processor (CPU) configuration options. 99 3.2 Memory subsystem . 111 3.2.1 Memory options. 111 3.2.2 Memory card . 113 3.2.3 Memory mirroring . 118 3.2.4 Hot-swap memory . 119 iv Planning, Installing, and Managing the IBM System x3950 M2 3.2.5 Hot-add memory . 120 3.2.6 Memory configuration in BIOS . 121 3.3 Internal drive options and RAID controllers. 124 3.3.1 LSI 1078 SAS onboard controller . 124 3.3.2 SAS disk drive options . 127 3.3.3 ServeRAID-MR10k RAID controller . 128 3.3.4 ServeRAID-MR10M SAS/SATA II controller . 135 3.3.5 SAS expansion enclosure (unit) . 142 3.3.6 Updating the SAS storage controllers . 148 3.4 Configuring RAID volumes . 154 3.4.1 Starting the LSI1078 controller BIOS . 154 3.4.2 Starting the ServeRAID-MR10k controller WebBIOS . 158 3.4.3 Working with LSI MegaRAID controller WebBIOS . 159 3.5 PCI Express options . 188 3.5.1 PCI and I/O devices . 188 3.5.2 PCI device scan order. ..