IBM 8204-E8A User manual

Ideal solution as an application, mid-sized database or Linux
consolidation server
IBM Power 550 Express server
Power 550 Express deskside and rack-mount servers
Highlights
■For UNIX®, IBM i (formerly
known as i5/OS®) and Linux®
ERP/CRM application servers
■For mid-size database servers
■For consolidation of UNIX,
IBM i, and x86 Linux workloads
■For medium to large-sized
businesses running the
IBM i operating system
The IBM Power™ 550 Express™ deliv-
ers the outstanding performance of the
POWER6™ processor—the world’s
fastest chip. The performance and
virtualization capabilities of the
Power 550 Express make it an ideal
system as a mid-size database or appli-
cation server. The Power 550 delivers
the performance to run applications
faster and more efficiently, which can
result in business advantages.
For mid-size database servers, the
Power 550 Express provides outstand-
ing performance, capacity and near-
continuous application availability.
Mid-sized companies can access data
faster, keep their applications running
around the clock, and focus attention
on growing their business.
The Power 550 Express supports an
extensive portfolio of proven solutions
by supporting multiple operating
systems: AIX®, IBM i, Linux for Power
and x86 Linux applications. This flexibil-
ity in operating environments lets you
deploy the applications your
business demands.
As a consolidation server, the
Power 550 Express provides the flexi-
bility to use leading-edge AIX, IBM i,
Linux for Power and x86 Linux
applications all on the same system.
PowerVM™ Editions offers comprehen-
sive virtualization technologies designed
to aggregate and manage resources
while helping to simplify and optimize
your IT infrastructure and reduce
server sprawl.

For a scalable, complete integrated
business system, the Power 550
Express allows the mid-sized company
seeking simplicity to avoid increased
spending and staffing requirements
while becoming more responsive to
their customers, improving their pro-
ductivity and keeping their data secure.
The Power 550 Express is a 2-, 4-,
6- or 8-core entry server utilizing
3.5, 4.2 or 5.0 GHz processors and
includes tremendous configuration
flexibility to meet most capacity and
growth requirements. The Power 550
Express offers a choice of operating
environments in either a deskside or 4U
rack-mount form factor. The platform is
designed to deliver outstanding busi-
ness value to medium-sized businesses
with the leadership performance of
POWER6 processors, choice of operat-
ing systems, proven virtualization capa-
bilities of PowerVM, and support for
innovative energy management tech-
nologies to help conserve energy and
reduce costs. Whether you need a
scalable complete business system
with integrated database and applica-
tion server, reliable and efficient server
consolidation platform or a high
performing system for application or
database serving, the Power 550
Express server can fulfill your require-
ments with the AIX, IBM i or Linux oper-
ating systems.
Leadership POWER6 performance
The leadership performance of the
POWER6 processor—the world’s
fastest chip—makes it possible for
applications to run faster and be more
responsive, which can result in busi-
ness advantages and higher client sat-
isfaction. In addition, a single system
can now run more applications and
can reduce the number of required
servers reducing infrastructure costs.
Feature Benefits
Leadership POWER6 performance
Outstanding scalability and capacity
Application availability
Flexibility and choice of AIX, IBM i, and
Linux operating systems
Improved utilization and energy
efficiency through PowerVM and
EnergyScale™ technologies
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Access data faster and improve response time
Do more work with fewer servers and experience infrastructure cost savings from a
reduction in the number of servers and software licenses
Easily grow the system as your business grows
Consolidate UNIX and Linux workloads utilizing PowerVM Editions
Broad portfolio of proven solutions with support for AIX, IBM i, Linux for Power
and x86 Linux operating systems
Keep applications up and running and focus on growing your business
Choose the operating system that best suits your application and business needs
Easily grow the system as your business grows
Better utilize IT assets while avoiding the costs of deploying a new server every time the
business needs another application
Go green and save with innovative energy management capabilities
Integration and simplicity ●
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Deploy applications faster and maintain systems more efficiently with fewer staff
Integrated business platform that allows all the applications to access the data they need
to improve productivity

The improved performance with
POWER6 also enables clients to get
more processing power with fewer
processors resulting in lower per core
software licensing costs.
Outstanding scalability and capacity
The IBM Power 550 Express offers
tremendous configuration flexibility to
meet most capacity and growth
requirements. Supporting up to four
POWER6 processor cards with each
card having up to 64 GB of memory
results in a maximum configuration of
eight processor cores and 256 GB
of memory. Combining the capacity
capabilities of the Power 550 Express
with PowerVM technology may help
simplify and optimize your IT infrastruc-
ture, reduce server sprawl and improve
energy efficiency.
Application availability
The Power 550 Express is designed
with capabilities to deliver near-
continuous application availability and
allow more work to be processed with
less operational disruption. RAS capa-
bilities include recovery from intermittent
errors or failover to redundant compo-
nents, detection and reporting of fail-
ures and impending failures, and
self-healing hardware that automatically
initiates actions to effect error correc-
tion, repair or component replacement.
In addition, the Processor Instruction
Retry feature provides for the continu-
ous monitoring of processor status with
the capability to restart a processor if
certain errors are detected. If required,
workloads can be redirected to alter-
nate processors, all without disruption
to application execution.
Flexibility and choice of operating
environments
The flexibility to use leading-edge
AIX, i, Linux for Power and x86 Linux
applications in a rack-mount or desk-
side form factor broadens the applica-
tion offerings available and increases
the ways clients can manage growth,
complexity and risk. Leverage these
easy-to-manage, easy-to-secure, and
highly reliable operating systems to run
thousands of proven industry solutions
that are sure to fit the needs of almost
any business.
Improved utilization and energy efficiency
As the price of energy increases and
resources are limited, energy efficiency
through better utilization has become
more important. The leadership per-
formance of the IBM Power 550
Express translates into greater
computing power for applications.
Combine this leadership performance
with PowerVM Editions to virtualize your
infrastructure and improve server utiliza-
tion and energy efficiency. Supported
by the AIX, IBM i and Linux for Power
operating systems, PowerVM Editions
provide an innovative set of compre-
hensive systems technologies and serv-
ices designed to enable you to easily
aggregate and manage virtualized
resources. Micro-partitions enable the
Power 550 Express to be split into a
flexible and highly utilized system.
IBM Systems Director Active
Energy Manager™ exploits POWER6
processor-based EnergyScale technol-
ogy which monitors power/thermal uti-
lization and conserves power by
enabling power management features
for improved system utilization and
energy efficiency.
Integration and simplicity
The Power 550 Express is designed to
simplify your IT environment. The
Power 550 Express can help you
reduce the number of servers, reduce
management costs and reduce mainte-
nance and licensing costs, opening the
door for reinvestment into business
growth.

Power 550 Express at a glance
Configuration options
Processor cores
Level 2 (L2) cache
Level 3 (L3) cache
RAM (memory)
Internal drive options
Internal disk storage
Media bays
Adapter slots
Two, four, six or eight 64-bit 3.5 GHz, 4.2 GHz or 5.0 GHz POWER6 with AltiVec™ SIMD
and Hardware Decimal Floating-Point acceleration
8 MB per processor card
32 MB per processor card
3.5 GHz: 4 GB to 128 GB of DDR2 SDRAM
4.2/5.0 GHz: 4 GB to 256 GB of DDR2 SDRAM
Six 3.5" SAS (146.8 GB, 300 GB, 450 GB 15K rpm)
or
Eight 2.5" SAS (73.4 GB 15K rpm; 146.8 GB 10k rpm)
or
Eight Solid State Drives (69 GB)
Up to 2.7 TB
One slimline and one half-high
Two PCI-X (266 MHz DDR); Three PCI Express 8x
Standard I/O adapters
Integrated Virtual Ethernet
Integrated disk
Other Ports
●Two Ethernet 10/100/1000 Mbps ports, or
●Four Ethernet 10/100/1000 Mbps ports, (option) or
●Two 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports (option)
3G SAS controller (internal; RAID optional)
Three USB, two HMC, two system ports, two SPCN
Expansion features (optional)
High-performance PCI adapters
GX adapters
GX slots
4 Gigabit Fibre Channel; 10 Gigabit Ethernet
RIO-2, 12x GX1
Two (each shares space with and replaces one PCI Express 8x slot)

Power 550 Express at a glance
PowerVM technologies
POWER Hypervisor™
PowerVM Express Edition (optional)
PowerVM Standard Edition (optional)
PowerVM Enterprise Edition2(optional)
RAS features
Operating systems
High availability
Power requirements
System dimensions
LPAR, Dynamic LPAR, Virtual LAN (Memory to memory inter-partition communication)
Up to three partitions on the server; PowerVM Lx86; virtualized disk and optical devices
(VIOS); Shared Processor Pool; and Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM)
PowerVM Express Edition plus Micro-Partitioning™ with up to 10 micro-partitions per
processor; Multiple Shared Processor Pools; Shared Dedicated Capacity
PowerVM Standard Edition plus Live Partition Mobility (LPM) and Active Memory™ Sharing
(AMS)
IBM Chipkill™ ECC, bit-steering memory and cache
Processor Instruction Retry
Alternate Processor Recovery
Service processor with fault monitoring
Hot-plug disk bays
Hot-plug PCI slots
Hot-plug and redundant power supplies and cooling fans
Dynamic Processor Deallocation
Extended error handling on PCI-X slots
AIX V5.3 or later
IBM i 5.4 or later
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP1 for POWER™ (SLES10 SP1) or later; Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 4.5 for POWER (RHEL4.5) or later; RHEL 5.1 or later
IBM PowerHA™ family
100v to 127v or 200v to 240v AC, -48v DC
Deskside: 21.3"H x 7.2-11.1"W x 30.6"D (540 mm x 183-283 mm x 778 mm); weight:
120.0 lb (54.4 kg)3
Rack drawer: 6.9"H (4U) x 17.3"W x 28.7"D (175 mm x 440 mm x 730 mm); weight:
120.0 lb (54.4 kg)3
Warranty (limited) 9 hours per day, Monday through Friday (excluding holidays), next-business-day for one
year at no additional cost; on-site for selected components; CRU (customer replaceable
unit) for all other units (varies by country). Warranty service upgrades and maintenance are
available.

For more information
To learn more about the
IBM Power 550 Express server, please
contact your IBM marketing representa-
tive or IBM Business Partner, or visit the
following Web sites:
●ibm.com/systems/power/
●ibm.com/systems/i/os/i5os/
●ibm.com/aix
●ibm.com/linux/power
●ibm.com/systems/p/solutions
●ibm.com/common/ssi
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2009
IBM Corporation
Integrated Marketing Communications
Systems and Technology Group
Route 100
Somers, NY 10589
Produced in the United States
April 2009
All Rights Reserved
This document was developed for products
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and no warranties or guarantees are expressed
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When referring to storage capacity, total TB
equals total GB divided by 1000; accessible
capacity may be less.
1Available configuration options are dependent
on the number of processor cores and other
factors. Contact IBM or your IBM Business
Partner for specific configuration restrictions.
2Not supported on IBM i 5.4, 6.1.
3Weight will vary when disks, adapters and
peripherals are added.
POD03005-USEN-05