IBM Revamps Entry xSeries Servers

Published: January 31, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Server maker IBM last week revamped the entry machines in its xSeries product line, giving them a performance kick with Intel's latest 64-bit single-core Pentium and dual-core Pentium D processors. The entry server market has always been fiercely competitive, and the advent of dual-core processors and relentless price competition have only made it hotter. The new machines released by Big Blue aim to keep the company in step with Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Fujitsu-Siemens.

There are a number of enhancements to the xSeries line, which follow similar enhancements that IBM made last fall as Intel was debuting the "Paxville" dual-core Xeon DP and Xeon MP processors, which go into midrange and high-end X64 servers. In late September, IBM also launched the xSeries 100, 206m, and 306m servers, which are based on Intel's "Mukilteo" E7230 chipset and supports only one processor socket per motherboard. The E7230 chipset can support the latest 64-bit, dual-core "Smithfield" Pentium D processor, the single-core Pentium 4, or the single-core Celeron processors (the latter two are now also 64-bit chips). While all three of the motherboards in the new machines are similar and are based on designs by IBM's Raleigh, North Carolina, and Taiwan xSeries labs, they are not identical. IBM doesn't make the boards, but instead contracts their manufacturing out to third parties.

With last week's announcements, IBM is adding faster processors and tweaking some of the peripherals used in the new machines.

The xSeries 100 is a tower machine that comes with 512 MB of PC2-4200 DDR2 main memory standard (up from 256 MB last fall), and with four DIMM slots is expandable to 8 GB using 2 GB DIMMs. This server has two PCI slots and two PCI-X slots and has room for two Serial ATA disk drives. Last fall, customers could choose between 80 GB or 500 GB SATA disks, but now IBM is offering 80 GB, 160 GB, and 250 GB SATA drive options; where the 500 GB disk went, no one knows. The xSeries 100 now supports a 2.66 GHz Celeron processor with a 533 MHz front side bus, Pentium 4 processors running at 2.8 GHz, 3 GHz, or 3.2 GHz with an 800 MHz bus, and a Pentium D processor running at 2.8 GHz or 3 GHz with an 800 MHz bus. The xSeries 100 has a 310-watt power supply and a single Gigabit Ethernet port that is on the motherboard. The base xSeries 100 comes with a 2.66 GHz Celeron chip, 512 MB of main memory, an 80 GB SATA disk, and no operating system; it costs $599. The beefiest configuration of the xSeries 100 has a 3 GHz Pentium D, 512 MB of main memory, and the 80 GB SATA drive for $2,209.

Last fall, customers could get Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition or Enterprise Edition preconfigured on the xSeries 100 and could order Red Hat's Enterprise Linux 3 or 4 and Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 for the machines if they wanted. This time around, IBM is bundling Microsoft's Small Business Server 2003 on the machines. The new xSeries 100 configurations will be available on February 17, with the heaviest configuration with Windows Small Business Server 2003 preloaded available on March 28.

The xSeries 206m that also made its debut last fall was a kicker to an existing 5U tower server that did not support the Pentium D and did not have redundant, hot swap power supplies. The original xSeries 206m server supported the Pentium D at speeds up to 3 GHz (with 2 MB of L2 cache per core), and Pentium 4 chips with either 1 MB or 2 MB of on-chip cache and running at up to 3.4 GHz. (The Celeron chip is not supported in this box.) With the revamp of the product last week, IBM is offering the Pentium 4 running at 2.8 GHz or 3 GHz with either 1 MB or 2 MB of L2 cache on the chip, while the Pentium D is being offered at 2.8 GHz, 3 GHz, or 3.2 GHz. Standard memory size has been doubled to 512 MB for the Pentium 4 machine and 1 GB for the Pentium D box, and main memory can be extended to 8 GB using four PC2-4200 DRR2 main memory DIMMs. It has a RAID mirroring controller built in, which can be upgraded to RAID 5 or RAID 6. This server comes with a 400-watt power supply standard, which can be upgraded to a pair of hot-swappable 430-watt power supplies. The xSeries 206m has more peripheral slots in some configurations. The earlier xSeries 206m had the same four slots as the xSeries 100--two PCI slots and two PCI-X slots--but now the basic xSeries 206m has two PCI slots and two PCI Express slots, with two PCI-X slots being optional for the largest Pentium D configuration. The xSeries 206m has an integrated Gigabit Ethernet port, and supports both SATA and SAS drives, which are available as front-loaded, hot swap drives in the tower. Novell's NetWare 6.5 operating system has been removed from the support grid, and Windows Server 2003, Linux, and IBM's own 4690 POS software are the only operating systems supported out of the box; only Windows can be preconfigured on the servers.

A base configuration of the xSeries 206m comes with a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4m 512 MB of main memory, an open disk bay, a CD drive, and a 400-watt power supply; it costs $719. The xSeries 206m with a 3.2 GHz Pentium D, 1 GB of main memory, no disk, a CD drive, and dual 430-watt power supplies costs $1,999. The revamped xSeries 206m will be available on February 8.

The xSeries 306m, the third IBM X64 server to be tweaked last week, is a rack-mounted version of the xSeries 206m, which means it doesn't have as much expansion room. Also, the xSeries 306m, instead of being 25 inches or 27 inches deep, as most 1U rack servers are, is a shallower 22 inches deep, which allows more room for air to move around and for cables at the back of server racks. It supports a 3 GHz Pentium 4 processor with 2 MB cache and the Pentium D running at 2.8 GHz, 3 GHz, or 3.2 GHz, with dual 2 MB caches. IBM is backing off on the fat SATA and SAS drives here, too. Last fall, the xSeries 306m only supported two 500 GB SATA or two 600 GB SAS drives, and now it supports 36 GB, 73 GB, 146 GB, and 300 GB SAS drives and 80 GB, 160 GB, and 250 GB SATA drives. The xSeries 306m has Gigabit Ethernet ports on the main board, and has only two PCI-X slots; one of those PCI-X slots can be upgraded to a PCI-Express slot.

The base xSeries 306m has a 3 GHz Pentium 4 processor, 512 MB of main memory, a CD drive, no disk, and it costs $1,109. A machine with a 3.2 GHz Pentium D, 1 GB of memory, a CD drive, and no disk costs $1,879. These machines will also be available on February 8.

IBM also said that select members of its latest X64 and Power servers have been added to the preconfigured eServer Cluster 1350 offering, which run Red Hat or SUSE Linux. The Opteron-based eServer 326 (both single- and dual-core models of the 1U server) were added to this so-called "bright cluster" offering. The Cluster 1350 can now also include Xeon-based xSeries 336 and 346 1U servers, BladeCenter HS20 Xeon-based blades, the p5 505 (a 1U, dual-core Power5 server), and a p5 550 (a Power5 machine with two, four, or eight Power5 cores in a 4U form factor). The Cluster 1350 can be extended up to 1,024 total servers in a single order.