|
|
|
If you are interested in doing business with Supermicro NZ, apply here for a login account. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Supermicro New Zealand
2U Twin System
24 June 2009
Supermicro showcased a 2U Twin2 system at the Germany Cebit tradeshow in April and did the same at Computex in Taiwan in June attracting a lot of attention. This 2U Twin2 system does have a special design and warrants our newsletter to discuss it in more depth.
It accommodates 4 individual systems and sits at the middle of the system density spectrum. At the low end is obviously the standard 1U system which we buy one at a time. At the high end is the blade server family such as the Office Blade hosting 10 blades in 7U and the Data Centre Blade hosting 14 blades in 7U. We have to buy the enclosure and overhead facilities irrespective of how many blades we need. The immediate response of the market is that the 2U Twin has filled a gap and provides an additional choice.
 |
 |
| In terms of management, the 2U Twin is the same as standard rack units (and not Blades). The 4 nodes (we do not call them blades) in the 2U Twin are totally separate although they share the same enclosure, the same Power Supply Unit and partially air blowers for ventilation. Each node has the following: |
(a) A motherboard with single or dual socket Xeon and up to 12 DIMM slots
(b) An IPMI 2.0 module on the motherboard for KVM and Virtual Media over IP
(c) 3 hot swappable 3.5" HDD on the front
(d) VGA, keyboard and mouse connector at the rear
(e) 2 USB ports and 1 serial port at the rear
(f) 3 GbE RJ45 ports at the rear including one dedicated for IPMI
(g) A control panel on the front
(h) Optionally 10GbE or Infiniband in lieu of GbE
(i) Optionally a Supermicro proprietary PCI Express add-on card
2U Twin has 4 appeals:
(a) Highest density at 0.5U per system
(b) Filling a gap of providing 4 systems with shared costs on enclosure and PSU
(c) Lowest cost for cold standby hardware
Let us explain the cold standby matter. It is in the context of spare hardware in order to maintain high availability of systems in operation. We address the single points of failure here.
(a) The PSU has a 1+1 hot standby
(b) The enclosure has passive electronics and failure rate is lower than 0.1%
(c) Air blowers are in an arrangement of 2 for 2 nodes. Their failure rate is also lower than 0.1% from our RA statistics.
(d) We will need to buy one motherboard module and one HDD caddy only as cold standby. It is an appealing proposition.
Supermicro New Zealand recommends Fitness for Purpose and Total Cost of Ownership as the criteria for purchase decisions. We recommend that 2U Twin be given attention. Please email
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
for your immediate requirements or concerns.
Editor
###
Supermicro New Zealand
Managed by Compucon New Zealand
|
|
|
