Lenovo ThinkSystem SR630: Rack Server Overview and Insight

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Bottom Line

The SR630 from Lenovo offers plenty of memory and storage capacity, along with versatile configurations. It also comes with enterprise-class RAS features. With world record benchmark scores for 1-processor rack server performance for compute-intensive applications (on two key benchmarks), it offers plenty of bang for the buck.

That makes this rack server ideal for single-threaded compute-intensive applications, such as High Frequency Trading (HFT), and other financial industry workloads. All that comes at a premium price, making it more suitable for large enterprise users, as well as SMEs with demanding applications.

This Lenovo is at a similar price range to the IBM Power S922 included in this guide. The IBM model wins on memory while the Lenovo machine provides far more storage.

Product Description:

The Lenovo ThinkSystem SR630 is a 2-socket 1U rack server suitable for a wide range of workloads for small businesses and large enterprises. It offers reliability, management, security, performance, and the flexibility for future growth. The SR630 server is designed to handle databases, virtualization, cloud computing, infrastructure security, systems management, collaboration/email, streaming media, web serving, High Performance Computing (HPC), and other workloads.

Featuring the Intel Xeon Processor Scalable Family, it delivers scalable performance and storage capacity. It supports up to two processors, up to 3 TB of 2666 MHz TruDDR4 memory, up to 12x 2.5-inch or 4x 3.5-inch drive bays with an extensive choice of NVMe PCIe SSDs, SAS/SATA SSDs, and SAS/SATA HDDs. The company also provides flexible I/O expansion options with the LOM slot, the dedicated storage controller slot, and up to 3x PCIe slots.

The SR630 server features an AnyBay design that allows a choice of drive interface types in the same drive bay: SAS drives, SATA drives, or U.2 NVMe PCIe drives. Onboard NVMe PCIe ports allow direct connections to the U.2 NVMe PCIe SSDs, which frees up I/O slots and helps lower NVMe solution acquisition costs. It is designed to meet ASHRAE A4 standards in select configurations, which enable users to lower energy costs, while still maintaining reliability.

Features:

Number of processors:

2

Processors supported:

Intel Xeon Scalable Processors, covering Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze

Cores per processor:

Up to 28 cores

Maximum processor frequency/cache:

3.6GHz; Maximum cache – 38.5MB

I/O expansion slots:

Up to 3x PCIe slots + internal RAID slot + Flexible LOM slot

Maximum memory/# slots/speed:

3TB / 24x DIMM slots / 2666MHz

Maximum Persistent Memory:

Apache pass will be available with CPU refresh coming in 2019.

“I really appreciate the robust performance,” said a Senior Consultant at a tech services company. 

Storage controller:

12 Gbps SAS/6 Gbps SATA RAID:

• RAID 0/1/10/5/50 with RAID 530-8i or RAID 730-8i 1GB Cache.

• RAID 0/1/10/5/50/6/60 with RAID 930-8i 2GB Flash or 16i 4 GB or 8 GB Flash.
  

12 Gbps SAS/6 Gbps SATA non-RAID:

• 430-8i or 16i HBA.

NVMe PCIe SSD:

• Onboard NVMe, 1610-4P NVMe Switch Adapter, 810-4P NVMe Switch Adapter.

Support:

• Premier Support: Premier Support service offers single point of contact for end-to-end problem resolution and third-party software support with direct access to Lenovo’s most advanced technicians for faster troubleshooting.

• YourDrive YourData: Lenovo’s YourDrive YourData service is a multi-drive retention offering that ensures data is always under your control, regardless of the number of drives that are installed in your Lenovo server.

• Enterprise Server Software Support: Lenovo Enterprise Server Software Support can help troubleshoot the entire server software stack. Choose support for server operating systems from Microsoft, Red Hat, SUSE, and VMware; Microsoft server applications; or both operating systems and applications.

“Technical support was very good. IBM support is very helpful and the initial setup was straightforward,” said a Senior Consultant at a tech services company.

Key Markets and Use Cases:

• Databases

• Virtualization and cloud computing

• Infrastructure security

• Systems management and collaboration

• High performance computing 

• Single-threaded compute-intensive applications, and financial workloads

Price:

An SR630 with a pair of Xeon 6136 CPUs, 512 GB of memory, and 2 1.6TB NVMe SSDs has a list price of $39,310.