Dell PowerEdge FX2 Rack Server Gen13 - Review

Today we'll be looking at Dells FX2 converged infrastructure platform which offers a definite departure from the typical PowerEdge

rackserver the FX 2 supports several different blade-like combinations so you get the best of both worlds easy and flexible rack deployments of the 2u chassis supporting the compact performance and agility of server blades it's a compact all-in-one modular solution combining compute storage and networking in a single package that shares cooling power and management this is an ideal platform for data centres and highly virtualized environments that can easily scale out the FX 2 is a converged infrastructure platform this means management of IT resources is centralized to consolidate systems.

Increase resource utilization rates all while lowering costs it creates a pool of virtualized servers storage and networking that's more adaptable for consolidating and sharing of resources instead of dedicating a group of systems to a single task converged infrastructures offer better flexibility and agility by offering automated IT processes with an integrated management system that can be managed from a single console there are two chassis options the FX 2 and the FX 2's both feature dual hot-plug PS use two i/o aggregator block bays a central management controller and both support quarter half and full width compute and storage modules or sleds however it should be noted the compute and storage modules for the FX 2 are not compatible with the VRTX and the m-1000 blade enclosure the FX 2's supports up to 8 hot-swap PCIe modules each of which support low profile pcie 3.0 expansion cards supporting NICs HBAs and external controllers including a low profile h8 30 RAID controller 2 PCIe switches on the midplane automatically mapped the PCIe slots to the compute modules the FX 2 on the other hand is less expensive and doesn't support PCIe slots our review unit is an FX 2's and features 2 half-width 2 socket FC 630 compute modules designed for private clouds and converged data centers each sled supports 2 intel xeon e5 2600 v3 cpus with up to 18 cores each twenty four dimm slots two PCIe slots either two two-and-a-half inch drives or a version that supports up to 8 1 point 8 inch SSDs it also supports dual SD cards for hypervisor redundancy and the perc 9 SAS controller with 4fc 630 compute blocks loaded on the FX 2 up to 144 cores and 96 DIMM slots are available for some truly impressive performance in a 2-u chassis three additional compute blocks are available.

Including the quarter with two socket FC 430 the full width for socket FC 830 and the half width for socket fm1 20x for the FM 120 X 4 houses for mini servers and is designed specifically for the FX 2 chassis without embedded PCIe modules the FD 332 is a half width high-density storage block and offers direct attached storage with a maximum of two raid controllers and 16 two and half inch drives that can be assigned to the internal compute node on the FX 2 FX servers can attach to a single FD 3 32 or multiple FD 3 32 s using dual raid controllers access to the 16 drives can be split to attach to 8 drive separately up to three hop with FD 3 32 storage box can be installed with a single half width FC 630 module to access up to 48 SFF storage devices for dense - storage the FM 120 X 4 cannot be used with the FD 3 32 storage module both compute and storage modules are warm swappable meaning they can be removed from an operational FX 2 enclosure after the individual compute module is powered off either remotely through the CMC or the ID rack or by pressing the on/off button on the front of the module with the FX 2 and the FX 2 s sleds and storage share redundant power cooling network switching and chassis management.

A hot plug fans supply cooling to the enclosure and sleds there's two PowerEdge FN io aggregator blocks located on the back of the system these replace the standard network interface simplifying cable management and optimizing east-west server-to-server traffic within the FX 2 chassis and the land sand convergence three different hot swappable aggregator blocks are available only to aggregators can be installed on the system at one time networking can also be implemented with the standard i/o pass-through modules but they don't offer the consolidation and cable.

Management supported by the aggregator blocks installing two io aggregators allows for dual redundant 10 gigabit paths between nodes the FX 2 offers administrators two ways to manage the system either Dells open managed portfolio of management tools featuring idrac 8 with lifecycle controller or Dells embedded chassis management controller located on the back of the system which can manage multiple chassis from one interface the CMC module is hot-swappable and monitors enclosure level power consumption temperature and error reporting through a browser CMC provides a centralized management tool for network and security settings power management IO modules and idrac settings CMC automatically monitors IO paths PCI slots and sleds to protect the system in the event of component failure administrators can manage components individually or collectively and specify the first boot device on the compute sleds two dedicated rj45 s one of which is a stack port connects to the external management network to daisy-chain CMC s in separate enclosures the stack port can also be used for CMC NIC failover both CMC and idrac eight are available with either Express or enterprise licensing administrators can mix and match various compute nodes or sleds to create several different configuration options on the front of the system you'll find the power-on button system. 

Identification button diagnostic indicators a KVM button allowing individual access to the sleds on the right you'll find the  article connector and a USB connector for a keyboard or mouse on the back of the system you'll find the CMC module which includes a db9 serial connector for CMC configuration a one gigabit ethernet connector and a stack one gigabit ethernet connector you'll also find two aggregator i/o modules a system identification button and up to eight low-profile PCIe slots if you have the FX 2's the FX two is a highly adaptable and agile addition to data centers offering excellent rack density it offers more flexibility than a blade server and supports several different server node configurations to suit your unique application the various combinations of compute and storage nodes support both mid-sized to large enterprises the FX systems are more than a match for mission-critical workloads including ecommerce virtual desktop infrastructure data warehousing and high performance computing other configurations support extra low latency applications for high frequency trading web serving and dedicated hosting we hope you enjoyed our review of Dells FX - if you have any questions please post them in the comment section below and like this  article


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