Author
Published
12 Dec 2017Form Number
LP0827PDF size
11 pages, 687 KB- Introduction
- SR950 4S Performance to 8S Upgrade
- New Processors now available
- Intel P4500 Entry NVMe SSDs now available
- Intel S4500 Entry SATA SSD now available
- Intel P4600 Mainstream NVMe SSDs now available
- Intel S4600 Mainstream SATA SSDs now available
- Intel P4800X Performance NVMe SSD now available
Abstract
In December, several new storage options, CPUs and configuration upgrades became available for the ThinkSystem SR950. Highlights include a new 4S Performance to 8S Upgrade, four new CPUs, six NVMe SSDs and 24 SATA SSDs.
Introduction
In December, several new storage options, CPUs and configuration upgrades became available for the ThinkSystem SR950. This article highlights the new options and features and provides the relevant part numbers.
SR950 4S Performance to 8S Upgrade
The ThinkSystem SR950 now allows upgrades from 4 Socket Performance and 4 Socket Performance- Storage Rich configurations to 8 Socket configurations. It requires a new upgrade kit, ThinkSystem SR950 4S Performance to 8S Upgrade Kit. This new kit provides the necessary mid-chassis interconnects required for an 8S SR950 server. This is particularly important to SAP HANA configurations that typically require a 4 Socket Performance configuration.
Figure 1. ThinkSystem SR950
The components need to upgrade a 4S Performance configuration to 8S are as follows:
- 4S Performance to 8S Upgrade Kit, 4TA7A10969 – to upgrade the mid chassis interconnects
- Upper Compute Tray – to support the new system boards, CPUs, DIMM
- One Compute System board – to add to the Upper Compute Tray (already comes with one Compute System board)
- Four matching 81xx CPUs – to become an 8S system
- Necessary RAID, Backplanes, Storage, DIMM, PCIe adapters
- Basic Lenovo Hardware Installation – to install the upgrade parts
The following table lists the ordering information for the upgrade kit.
Description | Part number | Feature code |
---|---|---|
ThinkSystem SR950 4S Performance to 8S Upgrade Kit | 4TA7A10969 | B2NS |
Refer to the Server Configuration Upgrades section of the SR950 Product Guide for the types of upgrades supported as well as the detailed steps and part numbers.
Additional SR950 Configuration Upgrades that have been available since SR950 launch are shown in the following table.
New Processors now available
The SR950 now supports four additional Intel Xeon Gold Scalable Family processors.
Intel P4500 Entry NVMe SSDs now available
The Intel P4500 Entry NVMe SSDs are general-purpose yet high-performance drives with a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface. They are designed for greater performance and endurance in a cost-effective design, and to support a broader set of workloads.
Figure 2. Intel P4500 Entry NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 SSDs
The following table lists the part numbers.
Intel S4500 Entry SATA SSD now available
The ThinkSystem Intel S4500 Entry SATA solid-state drives (SSDs) use Intel 3D NAND TLC Flash Memory technology with a 6Gbps SATA interface to provide an affordable solution with industry leading performance. The S4500 SSDs are optimized for read-intensive applications such as boot, web servers, lower data rate operational databases and analytics.
Figure 3. Intel S4500 Entry SATA SSD (without the hot-swap drive tray)
Intel P4600 Mainstream NVMe SSDs now available
The Intel P4600 Mainstream NVMe SSDs are advanced data center SSDs optimized for mixed read-write performance, endurance, and strong data protection for Lenovo servers. They are designed for greater performance and endurance in a cost-effective design, and to support a broader set of workloads.
Figure 4. Intel P4600 Mainstream NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD
Intel S4600 Mainstream SATA SSDs now available
The ThinkSystem Intel S4600 Mainstream SATA solid-state drives (SSDs) are advanced data center SSDs optimized for mixed read-write performance, endurance and strong data protection. The Intel SSD S4600 drives with 3 full drives writes per day (DWD) are an excellent choice as cache in transactional application and high-speed storage for enterprise databases.
Figure 5. Intel S4600 Mainstream SATA SSD
Intel P4800X Performance NVMe SSD now available
The ThinkSystem U.2 Intel P4800X Performance NVMe PCIe SSD is the ultimate in high performance solid state drives with ultra-low latency, very high bandwidth, and an endurance of 30 drive writes per day (DWPD), making this drive an excellent storage choice for write-intensive high-performance workloads.
Figure 6. Intel P4800X Performance NVMe PCIe SSD
The Intel P4800X SSD is a member of the Intel Optane family of data center solid state devices that are based on Intel-developed 3D XPoint memory, controller, interconnect technology and firmware, all providing significant gains in reducing latency and accelerating systems for workloads demanding large capacity and fast storage.
5100 Entry SATA SSDs now available
The ThinkSystem 5100 Entry SATA solid-state drives (SSDs) use Micron NAND flash memory technology with a SATA 6Gbps interface to provide an affordable solution for read-intensive workloads
Figure 7. 5100 Entry SATA SSD
5100 Mainstream SATA SSDs now available
The ThinkSystem 5100 Mainstream SATA solid-state drives (SSDs) use Micron NAND flash memory technology with a SATA 6Gbps interface to provide an affordable solution for mixed read/write workloads.
Figure 8. 5100 Mainstream SATA SSD
ThinkSystem Performance SAS SSDs now available
The ThinkSystem 12 Gb SAS HUSMM32 Enterprise Performance solid-state drives (SSDs) use 3D MLC NAND flash memory technology with a 12 Gb SAS interface to provide a high-performance storage solution. These drives offer high endurance supporting up to 10 full drive writes per day (10 DWPD) over 5 years meaning they are ideal for write-intensive applications. Compared to the previous generation 12 Gb SAS SSDs, these new SSDs offer more than double the random IOPS performance and double the sequential throughput performance.
Figure 9. 12 Gb SAS Enterprise Performance SSD
ThinkSystem additional HDDs and SSDs now available
These ThinkSystem HDDs and SSD is now available for SR950.
Conclusion
The SR950 is a very configurable system in terms of processors, memory, storage and I/O. Understanding the configurations, upgrades and available options will help you optimize the SR950 to best match your needs for performance, scalability and capabilities.
Further reading
For further reading, see these resources
This article is one in a series on the ThinkSystem SR950 and SR850 servers:
- Five Highlights of the ThinkSystem SR950
- Five Highlights of the ThinkSystem SR850
- Choosing between Lenovo ThinkSystem SR850 and SR950
- Workloads for 4-Socket and 8-Socket Servers
- Usability in the Design of the ThinkSystem SR950
- The Value of Refreshing Your 4-Socket Servers with the ThinkSystem SR950
- ThinkSystem SR950 Memory Decisions
- ThinkSystem SR950 Server Configurations
- The Value of Refreshing Your 8-Socket Servers with the ThinkSystem SR950
- Lenovo ThinkSystem SR950 New Options and Features - December 2017
- ThinkSystem SR950 Performance Leadership
- Lenovo Servers for Mission Critical Workloads
- Microsoft and Lenovo ThinkSystem SR950 – A Perfect Match
- Accelerate Your 4- and 8-Socket Server Refresh Cycle
- SAP Business Process Applications and Lenovo ThinkSystem SR950 – A Perfect Match
- ThinkSystem SR950 New Options - March 2018
- SAP HANA and Lenovo ThinkSystem SR950 – A Perfect Match
- ThinkSystem SR950 Performance Leadership Continues
- New Solution for SAP HANA - Lenovo ThinkAgile HX
- The Advantages of Keeping Mission Critical Workloads On-Premises vs Going to the Cloud
- SQL Server Migration and Lenovo ThinkSystem SR950
About the author
Randall Lundin is a Senior Product Manager in the Lenovo Infrastructure Solution Group. He is responsible for planning and managing ThinkSystem servers. Randall has also authored and contributed to numerous Lenovo Press publications on ThinkSystem products.
Trademarks
Lenovo and the Lenovo logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Lenovo in the United States, other countries, or both. A current list of Lenovo trademarks is available on the Web at https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/legal/copytrade/.
The following terms are trademarks of Lenovo in the United States, other countries, or both:
Lenovo®
ThinkAgile®
ThinkSystem®
The following terms are trademarks of other companies:
Intel®, 3D XPoint®, Intel Optane®, and Xeon® are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries.
Microsoft® and SQL Server® are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.
Other company, product, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.
Configure and Buy
Full Change History
Course Detail
Employees Only Content
The content in this document with a is only visible to employees who are logged in. Logon using your Lenovo ITcode and password via Lenovo single-signon (SSO).
The owner of the document has determined that this content is classified as Lenovo Internal and should not be normally be made available to people who are not employees or contractors. This includes partners, customers, and competitors. The reasons may vary and you should reach out to the authors of the document for clarification, if needed. Be cautious about sharing this content with others as it may contain sensitive information.
Any visitor to the Lenovo Press web site who is not logged on will not be able to see this employee-only content. This content is excluded from search engine indexes and will not appear in any search results.
For all users, including logged-in employees, this employee-only content does not appear in the PDF version of this document.
This functionality is cookie based. The web site will normally remember your login state between browser sessions, however, if you clear cookies at the end of a session or work in an Incognito/Private browser window, then you will need to log in each time.
If you have any questions about this feature of the Lenovo Press web, please email David Watts at dwatts@lenovo.com.