Dell PowerEdge FX2: Product Overview and Insight

See the full list of Top Blade Servers

Bottom line:

The PowerEdge FX2 is a good entry level blade for those that don’t need massive amounts of compute, memory or storage. With so many enterprises already heavily invested in Dell, this one is an obvious candidate for lower-end needs.

However, it does have power: Its compact form factor makes it well suited for server farms looking for commodity hardware that can pack a punch. Furthermore, businesses that want to expand later should consider the FX2: it can fit a total of 8 blades in its chassis. So an SMB looking for a low entry price but later expansion should consider this unit.

Product description:

The PowerEdge FX2 is the foundation for a flexible platform that can scale workloads quickly, as needed, adding resources incrementally with efficient chassis management. The FX2 chassis is a hybrid 2U rack integrated solution with the compact performance of compute sleds, combined with the simplicity of racks.

An Embedded Chassis Management Controller manages server nodes, storage, networking, and power from a single console. It has local and remote management capabilities. Each node contains iDRAC with Lifecycle Controller for agent-free systems management supported by OpenManage software. An optional InfiniBand configuration is available.

Eight blades can fit in a PowerEdge FX2 chassis. It can also fit up to 1.6 TB of SSD or HDD. An abundance of integrated storage and data protection options are available courtesy of the Dell EMC merger.

“Dell Blades and blade chassis are very easy to work on, install, maintain, and upgrade. I have not experienced any issues while working on these systems. the iDRAC interface is also simple and straight forward. These are a great design and easy to use,” said a Data Center Manager.

Max processors/cores:

2 Intel Xeon E5-2600 v4/up to 36 cores.

Maximum memory:

512 GB

Form factor:

Quarter width

Key markets and use cases:

• Data centers that seek dense virtualization

• Software defined storage

• High Performance Computing (HPC)

• Small Hadoop clusters

“The planning was done and the decision was made to go with the Dell blade infrastructure. The outcome was a smooth deployment and blades have worked out well,” said the Director of IT in manufacturing.

Price:

Starting at $2,789