Cisco UCS C240 M5 Rack Server: Features & Price

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Bottom line:

The Cisco M5 rack servers represents the 5^th generation of UCS servers, scaled machines that operate in large data centers with 60,000 or more users. These data centers require high performance processing for their workloads, edge applications, and distributed environments. The C240 M5 accelerates workload processing, and comes with native management tools to administrate these complex environments at lower cost.

For companies looking to move beyond the commodity white box – without breaking the bank – the Cisco UCS C240 is a top choice. It’s solid workhorse at a reasonable cost.

Additionally, the UCS 240 is impressively built. It has a combination of the latest Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs, with up to 28 cores per socket, and up to 24 DDR4 DIMMs for improved performance. The unit has up to 26 hot-swappable Small-Form-Factor (SFF) 2.5-inch drives.

For those businesses that need high performance, it includes up to 10 NVMe PCIe SSDs (on the NVMe-optimized chassis version), and an 12-Gbps SAS modular RAID controller in a dedicated slot. 

These and additional features make the UCS C240 well suited to a wide range of enterprise workloads, including: big data and analytics, collaboration, and SMB business databases. The UCS 240 easily handles demanding virtualization workloads.

Product description:

The Cisco Unified Compute System (UCS) C240 MW is a 2U 2-socket server that can accommodate 26 SFF, or 12 LFF + 2SFF drives, as well as 6 PCIe Gen3 slots. It is designed for high performance and expandability.

It supports a wide range of storage and I/O-intensive infrastructure workloads, from big data and analytics to collaboration. These racks can be deployed as standalone servers or as part of a Cisco UCS managed environment for those desiring a unified computing platform.

The unit can cope well with computing and data-intensive real-time workloads via up to two Intel Xeon Scalable processors. Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) PCI Express (PCIe) Solid-State Disks (SSDs) are also thrown in for good measure.

As a result of all these upgrades, these UCS racks deliver significant performance and efficiency gains over previous generations. And it comes with up to 200 TB of storage in certain configurations.

Features:

Number of processors:

Up to 2

Processors supported:

Intel Xeon Scalable processors

Cores per processor:

Up to 28

Maximum processor frequency/cache:

3.5GHz / 24.75 MB

I/O expansion slots:

6 PCIe Gen3, 1 mLOM

Maximum memory/# slots/speed:

3 TB / 24 / 2666M

Maximum Persistent Memory:

6 TB

Storage controller:

Embedded software RAID

Cisco 12G SAS RAID Controller

Cisco 12G SAS HBA

Support:

“The support area needs improving. Especially the time response in case of hardware failure,” said a Network Operations Manager at a services organization.

Key markets and use cases:

• Big data and analytics

• Data protection

• Databases (SQL, Oracle, SAP, etc.)

• AI inferencing & model training

• VSI & VDI Storage servers

• Collaboration

Price:

Starting at $4,199