Dell PowerEdge M820 Blade Server 4-Socket

Description

Designed for integration with Dell's M1000e enclosure, the full-height PowerEdge M820 is designed for database applications in datacenter environments. Outfitted with four sockets, this blade server can easily plow through the most demanding computational tasks and offers exceptional scalability for core business applications. With exceptional memory density and four processors this system is ideal for virtual environments and capable of supporting a multitude of large scale virtual machines. Up to eight full-height M820 blade servers can be installed in the M1000e enclosure, or it can be paired with other full-height, half-height, or quarter-height blade servers spanning several generations in the same enclosure.

Performance

Intel's C602 chipset supports a maximum of four Intel Xeon E5-4600 processors with either 4, 6, or 8 cores and 2.5MB cache per core. These processors are designed to decrease power consumption while offering a marked increase in performance over the previous generation Intel processors.

Memory

Each processor supports four memory channels with each channel supporting three memory modules for 12 memory sockets total assigned to each CPU. With all four sockets active the Dell M820 can support up to 48 registered DIMM (RDIMM) modules, or load reduced DIMMs (LRDIMM) modules, which offer greater memory density and an integrated buffer to reduce memory loading. Using RDIMMs the system will support transfer rates of 1600MT/s. With LRDIMM modules installed, the top transfer speed is rated at 1333MT/s. With all 48 memory slots loaded with 32GB memory modules the system will support a little over 1.5TB of memory. An M1000e outfitted with eight half-height chassis, and a full complement of 32GB memory modules, will support up to 12TB of memory.

Storage

The PowerEdge M820 server has room for a total of four hot-plug 2.5-inch SAS, SATA, and nearline SAS HDDs or SSDs. Another option supports two PCIe Express Flash SSDs in the hot plug drive bays. The PCIe drives offer dramatically increased performance when compared to standard HDDs and SSDs by connecting to the supported PCIe lanes running directly to the processor. The PCIe option requires a specific backplane that may not be upgraded later, so determine your needs before purchase. Administrators can choose from several different PERK RAID controllers with high I/O features that support several RAID options and have a dedicated connection to the mother board.

Expansion

The Dell M820 blade server supports up to four PCIe 3.0 mezzanine add-in card slots. There's also two embedded NICs with dual ports for network communications and three other options supporting quad-port 10GbE. Dell's network daughtercards, also referred to as Dell's Select Network Adapters, give Administrators choices for network connectivity including Ethernet switches at 1Gb to 10Gb, Fibre channel, and InfiniBand connections for high performance computing. There are two different select Network Adapters to choose from and each house the complete LAN on motherboard (LOM) subsystem. Installing mezzanine cards requires the same technology be installed in the I/O module (IOM) on the M1000e to support data flow. Video is handled by an integrated Matrox G200 module.

Management

To connect to third party management solutions, Dell's OpenManage systems management solution allows Administrators to maintain a single point of contact over the network environment by easily integrating with third party and existing management solutions. OpenManage leverages iDRAC7 (integrated Dell Remote Access Controller) with LifeCycle Controller enabling the blade servers to be managed in physical, virtual, local, and remote environments. iDRAC Express is standard equipment but Administrators can easily updgrade to Enterprise with the purchase of a license key as all the hardware is already installed. An Enterprise license offers additional management features to help manage your network more effectively. iDRAC is installed in each of the blades and on the integrated I/O modules installed in the M1000e chassis.

The Chassis Management Controller (CMC) located on the M1000e chassis provides the ability to manage multiple blade chassis. CMC gives Administrators the ability to manage up to nine M1000e chassis, and up to 288 servers, through a single secure, embedded agent-less interface—from anywhere in the world.

An optional integrated Dual SD module provides hypervisor failover when a backup copy is installed on the second card and the module is set to mirror mode.

Summary

For large organizations and datacenters, the M1000e blade enclosure offers an energy efficient platform for supporting multiple blade servers in a highly dense infrastructure with shared cooling, power, networking and management. The M1000e can also support several generations of blade servers to double down on ROI. The Dell PowerEdge M820 blade server provides administrators with a four-socket blade server solution for high-performance computing and demanding I/O applications.