Power Supply Modules
While the MFSYS25 comes with two pre-installed power supply modules, it has a capacity for up to four. The 1,000 W power supplies can run from 110 to 240 V, which is a great range as most small offices may not have the high-grade electrical infrastructure that big data centers have. As is the case with most of the major parts for the MFSYS25, the power supply modules are hot-swappable. The number of power supply modules you need depends on the number of compute modules you have running. One power supply can handle one compute module and all the other non-compute modules in the chassis. The second power supply would be your redundant backup. If you’re adding more modules, then you need to increase the number of power supplies as follows:
- one compute module=one power supply plus backup
- two to three compute modules=two power supplies plus backup
- four to six compute modules=three power supplies plus backup
While I think Intel put a lot of thought into designing the modular server, I’m not too crazy about having to physically unplug the power from the chassis in order to completely shutdown the MFSYS25. It would have been nice to add a power button somewhere on the chassis so administrators could avoid unplugging “hot” cables.
However, the power supply modules use standard computer power cords just like the ones that come with most PCs and there are no proprietary cables.
A last note regarding the power supply modules actually has to do with ventilation. I didn’t notice until later during my tests that the filler panel occupying the fourth power supply module bay wasn’t just taking up space, but it had several small fans and a circuit board inside that offered additional cooling to the chassis. I think that’s pretty smart as it enhances the functionality of an otherwise benign piece of hardware.
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.
Also I did not see any pricing on this. Did i miss it somewhere???
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."
Why isn't the poor network performance addressed as a con? No GigE interface should be producing results at FastE levels, ever.
So, When you gonna start folding on it
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.
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.
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.
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.
I priced a full chassis out for a client, and it was under 20k...
It can't be under 20K.
I reallty want to know what the price of this server is.
Actually it is under $20k for a fully confgured system with 6 blades - i priced it up online. You can push it a bit higher than this if you go for very high end memory (16GB+) and top bin processors but for most the fully loaded config would come in around $20k. It's very well priced.
The chassis for your client was under 20k... np
but to get one IDENTICAL to what was tested in this article - whats that cost? I would think "price as tested" would be a standard data point.
Also - the disk i/o graphs are way to small to read without a lot of extra mouse clicks, and even then i get "error on page" when trying to see the full rez version. Makes all that work you spent gathering the disk benchmarks rather useless if people cant read them.
the price as tested in the article is way less than $20k. they only had 3 compute modules and non redundant SAN or Switch. Their configuration would cost around $15k - seriously just go and price it up online - search MFSSYS25 and MFS5000SI
I have one sitting here on my desk with 6 compute modules, 2 Ethernet switches, 2 Controller modules, 4 power supplies, and 14-143GB/10k SAS drives. The 6 compute modules all have 16GB RAM, 2-Xeon 5420's each and 4 of them have the extra HBA card as well, our price was < $25,000 with everything including shipping and tax. The Shared LUN Key is about $400. We bought ours about 2 months ago.
So, When you gonna start folding on it 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.
Nahhh... you don't run F@H on CPUs any more
You run it on GPUs! CUDA FTW!
yeah, thats true. CUDA kills in folding.
Thanks for the comments/suggestions/questions everyone. Your input is appreciated and will be applied to future reviews.
We're addressing the issue with the network test results. - julio
This is the only solution that I can think of that has the integrated SAN solution. None of the OEM's (Dell, HP, IBM) can do that in their solution as of yet. Also if you configure the CPU's with L5430's this becomes the perfect VMware box.
As far as power switch... Remember that in a datacenter enviornment you do not turn off the chassis. there is less chance of accidental shutdown if there is no power switch on the main circuit. This is 6 servers network switch, and a SAn solution in-one you do not want a kill switch. that is why no OEM ever puts a power switch in thier blade solution Chassis.
Hi folks. We're re-running the network test this weekend. Stay-tune for the update. - julio