Intel’s 24-Core, 14-Drive Modular Server Reviewed

Features
By Julio Urquidi
published

Pros

The built-in KVM solution is great for two reasons:

  • Prevents blind remote restarts of the servers running on the compute modules, letting you catch errors during the boot process.
  • No need to invest in a remotely accessible KVM solution.

Well thought-out chassis design:

  • For a chassis system that is powering and cooling six individual servers, the MFSYS25 is not that loud. 
  • The efficient cooling infrastructure helps keep the CPUs from overheating.
  • Great design for a small virtualization solution.

The built-in SAN provides flexibility in building RAID groups:

  • The 14 SAS disk drives can be configured in RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 1E, 50 and 60.

Easy to manage thanks to the Web-based management console:

  • System administration of the MFSYS25 and its many components is simplified thanks to Intel's Modular Server Control management interface.

Great option for a small virtualization solution:

  • The shared LUN option (although it is not included in the price of the system) provides a great way to set up a cluster of VMware ESX servers, which in turn provides fail-over services and dynamic resource allocation for virtual machines.
Julio Urquidi
39 Comments Comment from the forums
  • kevikom
    This is not a new concept. HP & IBM already have Blade servers. HP has one that is 6U and is modular. You can put up to 64 cores in it. Maybe Tom's could compare all of the blade chassis.
    Reply
  • kevikom
    Also I did not see any pricing on this. Did i miss it somewhere???
    Reply
  • sepuko
    Are the blades in IBM's and HP's solutions having to carry hard drives to operate? Or are you talking of certain model or what are you talking about anyway I'm lost in your general comparison. "They are not new cause those guys have had something similar/the concept is old."
    Reply
  • Why isn't the poor network performance addressed as a con? No GigE interface should be producing results at FastE levels, ever.
    Reply
  • nukemaster
    So, When you gonna start folding on it :p

    Did you contact Intel about that network thing. There network cards are normally top end. That has to be a bug.

    You should have tried to render 3d images on it. It should be able to flex some muscles there.
    Reply
  • MonsterCookie
    Now frankly, this is NOT a computational server, and i would bet 30% of the price of this thing, that the product will be way overpriced and one could buid the same thing from normal 1U servers, like Supermicro 1U Twin.
    The nodes themselves are fine, because the CPU-s are fast. The problem is the build in Gigabit LAN, which is jut too slow (neither the troughput nor the latency of the GLan was not ment for these pourposes).
    In a real cumputational server the CPU-s should be directly interconnected with something like Hyper-Transport, or the separate nodes should communicate trough build-in Infiniband cards. The MINIMUM nowadays for a computational cluster would be 10G LAN buid in, and some software tool which can reduce the TCP/IP overhead and decrease the latency.
    Reply
  • less its a typo the bench marked older AMD opterons. the AMD opteron 200s are based off the 939 socket(i think) which is ddr1 ecc. so no way would it stack up to the intel.
    Reply
  • The server could be used as a Oracle RAC cluster. But as noted you really want better interconnects than 1gb Ethernet. And I suspect from the setup it makes a fare VM engine.
    Reply
  • ghyatt
    I priced a full chassis out for a client, and it was under 20k...
    Reply
  • navvara
    It can't be under 20K.

    I reallty want to know what the price of this server is.
    Reply