Dell unveils PowerEdge microservers

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  • Dell PowerEdge C5125 12-sled

    Dell PowerEdge C5125 12-sled

    Dell has introduced a new generation of low-power, high-density PowerEdge microservers.

    The PowerEdge C5125 (pictured) and C5220 are designed for shared and cloud-computing infrastructures, along with dedicated hosting, Dell announced on Tuesday. Specifically, the compact structures of the servers are specialised for running non-virtualised applications on dedicated physical servers, as Facebook has admitted to doing with test microservers.

    "One of the most important attributes of the PowerEdge C5125 and C5220 is the density. By packing 12 one-socket servers in a 3U form factor, these systems deliver four times the density of more conventional 1U servers," wrote Barton George, a cloud-computing evangelist at Dell, on a blog post on Tuesday. "This translates to four times less floor space, cabling and racks, all of which means greater revenue per square foot for web hosters and datacentre operators."

    Each server can feature up to 12 single-socket server sleds in a single 3U chassis. According to Dell, the servers — produced by Dell's Data Centre Solutions division — cost 75 percent less to cool than comparable HP or IBM 1U [one-rack unit] servers.

    The C5125 is AMD-based and will be available in April, while the C5220 uses Intel's Xeon or Core i3 Sandy Bridge processors and will be available in May.

    The chassis for the new PowerEdge server family is the C5000 'Viking' chassis, which Dell outlined in September.

    The launch follows the announcement by Intel in early March that it plans to push into the microserver category with its Xeon, Sandy Bridge and Atom processors.

    Photo by: Dell

    Caption by: Jack Clark

  • Dell PowerEdge C5125 with four 2.5-inch drives

    Dell PowerEdge C5125 with four 2.5-inch drives

    The AMD-based C5125 can fit up to 12 server sleds in a 3U chassis with shared mechanicals, fans and power supplies. It will support AMD's Phenom II and Athlon II processors.

    Each one-socket server node can have four 2.5-inch hard drives (pictured) or two 3.5-inch drives, four DIMM slots for up to 16GB of RAM, and two Gigabit Ethernet ports. It supports Novell Suse Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP1, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise x64 and Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 x64. Optional hypervisors include Citrix XenServer 5.6 and Microsoft Server 2008 Hyper-V.

    The C5220 can fit between eight and 12 single-socket server sleds in a chassis with the same shared infrastructure as the C5125. It supports Intel Xeon E3-1200 or Core i3-2120 — code-named Sandy Bridge — processors in either two or four-core configurations.

    The eight-sled variant supports up to 95W of thermal design power (TDP) per processor; the 12-sled supports up to 65W TDP. It can have up to 32GB of RAM and can store up to 2TB of storage in four 2.5-inch drives or two 1.2TB in 3.5-inch drives.

    It supports the same operating systems as the C5125, but has additional hypervisor support via compatibility with VMware ESX 4.1 and VMware ESXi 4.1.

    Photo by: Dell

    Caption by: Jack Clark

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Dell has outlined a new generation of microservers, based on its Viking chassis, for use in demanding high-density computing environments

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Dell PowerEdge C5125 12-sled

Dell has introduced a new generation of low-power, high-density PowerEdge microservers.

The PowerEdge C5125 (pictured) and C5220 are designed for shared and cloud-computing infrastructures, along with dedicated hosting, Dell announced on Tuesday. Specifically, the compact structures of the servers are specialised for running non-virtualised applications on dedicated physical servers, as Facebook has admitted to doing with test microservers.

"One of the most important attributes of the PowerEdge C5125 and C5220 is the density. By packing 12 one-socket servers in a 3U form factor, these systems deliver four times the density of more conventional 1U servers," wrote Barton George, a cloud-computing evangelist at Dell, on a blog post on Tuesday. "This translates to four times less floor space, cabling and racks, all of which means greater revenue per square foot for web hosters and datacentre operators."

Each server can feature up to 12 single-socket server sleds in a single 3U chassis. According to Dell, the servers — produced by Dell's Data Centre Solutions division — cost 75 percent less to cool than comparable HP or IBM 1U [one-rack unit] servers.

The C5125 is AMD-based and will be available in April, while the C5220 uses Intel's Xeon or Core i3 Sandy Bridge processors and will be available in May.

The chassis for the new PowerEdge server family is the C5000 'Viking' chassis, which Dell outlined in September.

The launch follows the announcement by Intel in early March that it plans to push into the microserver category with its Xeon, Sandy Bridge and Atom processors.

Caption by: Jack Clark

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