Edit: Link no longer works. This announcement feels like it happened yesterday.
Originally posted October 3, 2014 on AIXchange
New POWER8 server models were announced today: the scale-up E870 (9119-MME) and E880 (9119-MHE) along with an Ubuntu Linux only model called the S824L. The E (with the “E” denoting “enterprise”) models will have I/O drawers available. An IBM Statement of Direction (SoD) indicates that I/O drawers will be available for the S models in 2015. The E870 and E880 will be generally available Nov 18. This blog post provides details on the E models.
These new systems are a blend of the 795 and 780/770s. Architecturally these new machines are similar to the Power 795, but the packaging in a 19-inch rack with multiple CECs is similar to the Power 780/770. The preliminary CPW and rPerf numbers that I saw during the training (that were still being tested and confirmed) were substantial and impressive. I‘m sure we will see more information around these numbers that I did not have available to me at the time of writing.
The E870 is available as a one- or two-node system, and the E880 will eventually be available as a one-, two-, three- or four-node system, although at GA it will only be available as a one- or two-node system. The third and fourth node configurations are planned to GA in June 2015.
Each node in the E870 and E880 will have eight PCIe Gen3 x16 slots for low profile PCIe adapters; optionally these slots will be used as optical interfaces to the I/O drawers. The nodes are 5U in size and come with different core densities and speeds. The E880 will have a 32-core 4.35 GHz option with a SoD for a 48-core node. The E870 will have a 40-core 4.19 GHz option or a 32-core 4.02 GHz option. All nodes in a server must have identical processors, you cannot mix and match nodes. This means that the maximum for the E880 32-core node will be 64 cores at GA, with 128 cores in 2015. An SoD indicates IBM plans for 192 cores in 2015 using 48-core nodes. The E870 will have a maximum of 80 cores with the 40-core node, and 64 cores with the 32-core node.
There are 32 memory slots per node. These systems are using custom DIMMs that are running at 1600 MHz DDR3, with the E870 going up to 2 TB per node (with an SoD taking them to 4 TB per node in 2015) and the E880 going up to 4 TB per node when you use the largest DIMM sizes that are currently available.
There are no integrated SAS bays or SAS controllers in the node. There is no integrated DVD bay or DVD controller in the node. There is no integrated Ethernet in the node and no tape bay in the node. The node is strictly for power supplies, CPUs, memory and PCI slots.
A new concept is the system control unit, which is a 2U drawer that connects to the server at the midplane. It must be immediately physically adjacent to the system nodes. It holds the service processors, the HMC ports, the master system clocks, the operator panel, the VPD and an optional DVD. The system control unit also contains the redundant power, hot plug clock and battery. The idea is that all of the important components in the system control unit are redundant and these components are not a single point of failure for the machine.
A one-node E870 or E880 will take up 7U in a 19-inch rack, two nodes will take up 12U, and eventually when we get to three nodes it will take up 17U, and four nodes will take up 22U. IBM recommends that we leave 1U open at the top and/or bottom of the rack for easier cable management. IBM also recommends that we mount 1U power distribution units (PDUs) horizontally instead of in the side pockets to make cabling easier instead of the PDUs that go along the sides of the racks as many of us are used to.
The I/O expansion drawer connects to the nodes using two PCI slots from the node via an optical cable. For each drawer you attach, you gain 12 slots, but you effectively “lost” two slots on the system node, for a net gain of 10 slots for each I/O drawer. For this first announcement we can attach up to two I/O drawers per node, with a total of four per system in 2014. If you attach two drawers to a two-node system this will give you 56 total I/O slots. The SoD states that IBM plans to support up to four I/O drawers per node which would take us to eight I/O drawers or 96 I/O slots on a two-node system. For this 2014 announcement you can have either zero or two drawers per node. There is no option to just do three drawers, for example, at this time. IBM issued an SoD for the I/O drawers to connect to the S models, but that will not be available until next year, and new firmware will be required to take advantage of I/O drawers.
Using physical I/O you can run:
AIX
AIX 7.1 TL3 SP4 with APAR IV63332 or later
AIX 7.1 TL2 SP6 or later (Jan 2015)
AIX 6.1 TL9 SP4 and APAR IV63331 or later
AIX 6.1 TL8 SP6 or later (Jan 2015)
With VIOS you can run:
AIX 7.1 TL2 SP1 or later
AIX 7.1 TL3 SP1 or later
AIX 6.1 TL8 SP1 or later
AIX 6.1 TL9 SP1 or later
IBM i
IBM i 7.2 TR1 or later
IBM i 7.1 TR9 or later
Linux
RHEL 6.5 or later
SUSE 11 SP3 and later
VIOS
VIOS 2.2.3.4 with ifix IV63331 or later
VIOS 2.2.2.6 or later (Jan 2015)
The firmware level will be 8.2.0
Other items of note in the announcement include:
- If you want to do a model upgrade and retain the same serial number you can migrate a 770 D model to an E870, and you can upgrade a 780 D model to an E880.
- The 5887 EXP24S I/O drawer is supported on these new machines, and if you want internal boot disks, this drawer is going to be the method you use to achieve that.
- The PVU for the E870 and E880 will be 120, for AIX these machines will be a medium software tier and for IBM i these will be P30 machines.
- Because these servers will pack a great deal of compute capability in a small footprint, you can definitely hear the fans, especially when they speed up to handle additional load. You may want to consider acoustic doors in your racks.
- A new S824L model is planned to GA on Oct. 31.It is designed for high-performance analytics, big data and Java application workloads. It will incorporate NVIDIA El Capitan K40 GPU adapters and will run Ubuntu 14.10 exclusively. Virtualization will not be available for this machine.
- There will be 2x memory available for the S824, you will be able to get 2 TB into the machine with 128G DIMMs via an RPQ, but mixing of DIMM sizes on the machine isn’t allowed.
- The S822L and S822 are NEBS Level-3 and ETSI certified for use by clients that require a hardened infrastructure, they are designed for “extreme shock, vibration, and thermal conditions which exceed normal data center design standards.”
- An RPQ is available to allow 900W 100-120V power supply options for four-core or six-core S814 rack-mounted servers.
These are just some of the highlights from the announcements. I have been to a few training sessions so far and there is even more information than I was not able to cover here, but I wanted to give you a flavor of what was coming in the near future. You can read the IBM news release here.