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For the last six months or so I’ve been on the look out for server and storage hardware to satisfy the requirement for new Management Clusters across our Zettagrid vCloud Zones… After a fairly exhaustive discovery and research stage the Dell PowerEdge FX2 dropped at the right time to make the newly updated converged architecture hardware platform a standout choice for a HCI based solution.

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I plan on doing a couple of posts on the specifics of the hardware chosen as part of the build that will end up as a VMware VSAN configuration but for the moment there is a little more info on the FX2 PowerEdge (below) as well as a Virtual Unboxing video that goes through the initial familiarization with the CMC and then walks through the FC430 System and Storage Configuration as well as what the new BIOS menu looks like:

 

Below are some specs from the Dell site going through the compute and storage hardware…as you saw in the video above we went for the 1/4 Blade FC430’s with two FD322 Storage Sleds.

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Server blocks at the heart of the FX converged architecture are powered by the latest Intel® Xeon® processors. They include:

  • FC430: 2-socket, quarter-width 1U high-density server block with optional InfiniBand configuration
  • FC630: 2-socket, half-width 1U workhorse server block ideal for a wide variety of business applications
  • FC830: Powerful 4-socket, full-width 1U server block for mid-size and enterprise data centers
  • FM120x4: Half-width 1U sled housing up to four separate Intel® Atom® powered single-socket microservers offers up to 16 microservers per 2U.

The FC430 features:

  • Two multi-core Intel® Xeon® E5-2600 v3 processors or one multi-core Intel® Xeon® E5-1600 v3 processor (up to 224 cores per FX2)
  • Up to 8 memory DIMMs (up to 64 DIMMs per FX2)
  • Two 1.8″ SATA SSDs or one 1.8″ SATA SSD (w/front IB Mezzanine port)
  • Dual-port 10Gb LOM
  • Access to one PCIe expansion slot in the FX2 chassis

The FD332 provides massive direct attached storage (DAS) capacity in easily scalable, modular half-width, 1U blocks. Each block can house up to 16 direct-attached small form factor (SFF) storage devices. Combined with FX servers, the FD332 drives highly flexible, scale out computing solutions and is an excellent option for dense VSAN environments using optimized ratios of HDD/SSD storage (including all flash) .

  • Up to 16 SFF 2.5″ SSDs/HDDs , both SATA and SAS
  • Up to three FD332 blocks per chassis (with one FC630 for processing). Other storage options include one or two blocks with different combinations of server blocks
  • 12Gbps SAS 3.0 and 6Gbps SATA 3.0
  • PowerEdge RAID Controller (PERC9), single or dual controllers, RAID or HBA modes, or mix and match modes with dual controllers

My first impressions are that this is a very very sexy bit of kit! I am looking forward to getting it up and firing and putting it to use as the basis for a solid Management Cluster platform.

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/poweredge-fx/pd?oc=pe_fc430_1085&model_id=poweredge-fx&l=en&s=bsd