IBM takes on the low-cost, scaleable microserver segment and announces the NeXtScale System, a flexible platform promising "3 times as many cores as current one-unit rack servers."
Similar to other x86-based microservers such as HP Moonshot, NeXtScale is a minimalist, dense server design using half-width server nodes. Designed to eventually replace the iDataPlex line, the system incorporates up to 86 systems and 2016 processing cores within a 19-inch rack.
It uses standard I/O cards and top-of-rack networking switches, and runs a software stack featuring IBM General Parallel File System, GPFS Storage Server, xCAT, and Platform Computing.
"NeXtScale is designed to deliver raw throughput and performance, and is positioned well to handle HPC, cloud, grid, and managed hosted workloads," the company claims. "In addition, this new system provides clients a great deal of flexibility in configuration and components, making it one platform that can do it all."
A NeXtScale systems consists of the nx1200, a bare-bone 6U chassis with 6 half-width server nodes. Each server nodes has 2 sockets, allowing for 24 sockets of Xeon E5 computing in 6U space.
The chassis also features up to six 600W power supplies, and up to ten hot swap fans.
In addition Big Blue also launches the x3650 M4 HD, a 3650-class system upgrade featuring with a 12GB RAID and 60% higher spindle count.