Difference between revisions of "Servers"
(Sever rental) |
(No difference)
|
Latest revision as of 22:05, 2 October 2025
Technical Documentation: Enterprise Server Platform (Model ES-9000 Series)
- A comprehensive guide to the high-density, dual-socket server platform designed for mission-critical workloads.
This document details the specifications, performance metrics, operational requirements, and deployment recommendations for the Enterprise Server Platform (ESP) ES-9000 series, a leading-edge, rack-mounted server optimized for virtualization, high-performance computing (HPC), and large-scale database operations.
1. Hardware Specifications
The ES-9000 series is designed around a modular, dual-socket architecture, supporting the latest generation of server-class processors and high-speed memory subsystems. All components are specified for 24x7 operation in enterprise data center environments.
1.1 Chassis and Form Factor
The chassis adheres to standard 2U rack-mount specifications, prioritizing density without compromising thermal dissipation or serviceability.
| Feature | Specification |
|---|---|
| Form Factor | 2U Rackmount |
| Dimensions (H x W x D) | 87.3 mm x 448 mm x 790 mm (3.44 in x 17.6 in x 31.1 in) |
| Weight (Fully Loaded) | ~35 kg (77 lbs) |
| Rack Compatibility | Standard 19-inch EIA Rack |
| Material | High-strength SECC Steel with optimized airflow channeling |
1.2 Central Processing Units (CPUs)
The platform supports dual-socket configurations utilizing the latest generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors (codenamed "Sapphire Rapids" or equivalent AMD EPYC architecture, depending on SKU variant).
| Parameter | Specification (Standard SKU) | Specification (HPC SKU) |
|---|---|---|
| Socket Count | 2 (LGA 4677) | |
| Maximum Cores per Socket | 60 Physical Cores | 64 Physical Cores |
| Base Clock Frequency | 2.4 GHz | 2.8 GHz |
| Max Turbo Frequency (Single Core) | Up to 3.9 GHz | Up to 4.1 GHz |
| L3 Cache (Total) | Up to 112.5 MB per socket | Up to 128 MB per socket |
| TDP Range Supported | 185W to 350W | 300W to 400W |
| Interconnect | UPI (Ultra Path Interconnect) or Infinity Fabric Link |
The platform’s UPI/Infinity Fabric configuration is critical for minimizing inter-socket latency, offering bandwidth exceeding 800 GB/s aggregated between the two CPUs. CPU Cache Hierarchy is a key determinant of application performance on this platform.
1.3 Memory Subsystem
The ES-9000 utilizes DDR5 technology, supporting high-speed Persistent Memory modules (PMEM) for specific workloads.
| Parameter | Specification |
|---|---|
| Memory Type | DDR5 ECC RDIMM/LRDIMM |
| Maximum Channels per Socket | 8 Channels (16 total) |
| Maximum DIMM Slots | 32 (16 per CPU) |
| Maximum Supported Capacity | 8 TB (using 256GB LRDIMMs) |
| Maximum Data Rate | 4800 MT/s (JEDEC standard, higher speeds achievable with specific BIOS tuning) |
| Memory Mirroring Support | Yes (via BIOS/UEFI configuration) |
| Persistent Memory Support | Yes (via specified Intel Optane Persistent Memory series modules, capacity dependent) |
Optimal memory population involves balancing channel utilization with DIMM population density to maintain Memory Bandwidth saturation.
1.4 Storage Subsystem
Storage flexibility is a core design principle, supporting high-speed NVMe devices alongside traditional SATA/SAS drives for tiered storage solutions.
| Bay Type | Quantity | Interface/Protocol | Controller Support |
|---|---|---|---|
| Front Accessible Bays (Hot-Swap) | 24 x 2.5-inch | SAS3/SATA III/NVMe (PCIe Gen4/Gen5) | Hardware RAID Controller (RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, 60) |
| M.2 Slots (Internal) | 2 x PCIe Gen4 x4 | NVMe (Dedicated for OS/Boot) | |
| U.2 Backplane Support | Optional module for 4 x U.2 NVMe drives | PCIe Gen4/Gen5 | |
| Optical Drive Bay (Optional) | 1 x Slimline | SATA |
The primary storage controller is typically a high-port-count LSI/Broadcom MegaRAID series card, providing hardware offload for complex RAID calculations, thereby preserving CPU cycles for application processing. RAID Levels Comparison should be consulted when designing storage pools.
1.5 Networking and I/O
The server provides extensive I/O capabilities via PCIe Gen5 lanes derived directly from the CPU complex and the Platform Controller Hub (PCH).
| Slot Type | Quantity | PCIe Generation/Lanes | Typical Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| PCIe Full Height/Length (FHFL) | 4 slots | Gen5 x16 | High-speed Fabric Interconnects (e.g., InfiniBand, 400GbE) |
| PCIe Half Height/Length (HHHL) | 2 slots | Gen5 x8 | Dedicated RAID or Management Adapters |
| Onboard LOM (LAN on Motherboard) | 2 Ports | 10/25 GbE Base-T/SFP+ | Management and Base Connectivity |
| OCP 3.0 Slot | 1 Slot | PCIe Gen5 x16 | Flexible High-Speed NIC Upgrades (e.g., 100/200/400 GbE) |
The modern PCIe Gen5 interface doubles the bandwidth compared to Gen4, offering 128 GT/s per lane bidirectional aggregate throughput, essential for high-throughput storage arrays and specialized accelerators like GPU Acceleration in Servers.
1.6 Power and Cooling
Power redundancy and thermal management are critical due to the high component density and TDP ratings.
| Parameter | Specification |
|---|---|
| Power Supplies (Redundant) | 2 x Hot-Swappable, Titanium/Platinum Rated |
| Power Output (Per PSU) | 2000W (1+1 Redundancy) |
| Input Voltage Range | 200-240V AC (Nominal) |
| Cooling System | 6 x Hot-Swap, High Static Pressure Fans (N+1 Redundancy) |
| Acoustic Profile (Typical Load) | < 55 dBA at 1 meter |
| Power Efficiency Goal | 80 Plus Titanium (94% efficiency at 50% load) |
The cooling system employs an advanced airflow shroud design to ensure consistent thermal profiles across the CPU dies and memory modules, minimizing thermal throttling, which is a major concern in Server Power Density calculations.
2. Performance Characteristics
Performance validation for the ES-9000 series focuses on sustained throughput, latency-sensitive operations, and vectorized processing capabilities, reflecting its target workloads.
2.1 Synthetic Benchmarks
Standardized synthetic benchmarks provide baseline metrics across key performance indicators (KPIs). The results below are based on a configuration utilizing dual 56-core CPUs (3.0 GHz base) and 1TB of DDR5-4800 RAM.
| Benchmark Suite | Metric | Result | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| SPEC CPU 2017 Integer Rate | Base Rate Score | ~1200 | Measures general-purpose integer throughput. |
| SPEC CPU 2017 Floating Point Rate | Base Rate Score | ~1550 | Measures computational performance for scientific modeling. |
| Stream Triad Bandwidth | Peak Memory Bandwidth | ~850 GB/s | Tests sustained memory read/write/add operations. |
| IOzone (Storage) | Sequential Write (24x 3.84TB NVMe) | ~35 GB/s | Achieved using PCIe Gen4 NVMe configuration. |
The high SPECfp score indicates significant suitability for workloads relying heavily on Floating Point Operations.
2.2 Virtualization Density
For virtualized environments, performance is measured by the maximum stable density of virtual machines (VMs) or containers that can be hosted while maintaining defined Quality of Service (QoS) limits.
Testing involved running a mixed workload suite (web serving, light databases, VDI) on a 1:10 physical-to-virtual core ratio.
- **Maximum Stable VM Count (Linux/KVM):** 280 VMs (with 2 vCPUs each)
- **Observed CPU Utilization (Peak):** 92% sustained
- **Observed Memory Utilization:** 95% sustained
- **Hypervisor Overhead:** Averaged 3% CPU time loss.
The significant memory capacity (up to 8TB) allows for high consolidation ratios, a key advantage over smaller, single-socket systems. Virtual Machine Density planning relies heavily on these metrics.
2.3 Database Transaction Processing
The platform excels in Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) due to fast I/O subsystems and high core counts.
The TPC-C benchmark (simulating order entry/fulfillment) demonstrated superior scalability:
- **TPC-C Throughput (tpmC):** 450,000 tpmC (with 8TB RAM)
- **Latency (95th Percentile):** < 5 ms for 99% of transactions.
This performance is largely attributable to the low-latency path between the CPU, high-speed DDR5 memory, and the NVMe storage array managed by the hardware RAID controller. Database Server Optimization techniques are crucial to fully leverage this hardware.
2.4 Latency Analysis
For HPC and financial trading applications, inter-socket communication latency is paramount.
- **Inter-CPU Latency (Measured via shared memory access):** 75 ns (typical)
- **Local DRAM Access Latency:** 98 ns (read) / 110 ns (write)
These low latency figures confirm the efficiency of the UPI interconnect architecture in minimizing the penalty associated with accessing memory allocated to the peer socket.
3. Recommended Use Cases
The ES-9000 series is engineered for enterprise workloads demanding high core count, massive memory capacity, and high-speed I/O.
3.1 Enterprise Virtualization Hosts
The capacity for 8TB of RAM and dual-socket processing power makes this platform ideal for hosting large-scale VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V clusters. It minimizes the number of physical hosts required to support a large number of virtual machines, reducing rack space, power consumption, and management overhead.
3.2 High-Performance Computing (HPC)
When configured with high-TDP CPUs and specialized PCIe Gen5 accelerators (such as NVIDIA H100 GPUs via the available x16 slots), the ES-9000 serves as an excellent compute node. Its high-bandwidth memory and CPU interconnect support complex parallel computations found in fluid dynamics, computational chemistry, and large-scale finite element analysis (FEA).
3.3 Large-Scale Relational Databases
The combination of up to 24 high-speed NVMe drives, massive RAM capacity for buffer pool caching, and robust CPU performance makes this server highly suitable for running memory-intensive database systems like Oracle RAC or large SQL Server instances, particularly those requiring high transaction rates (OLTP) or large analytical processing (OLAP).
3.4 Big Data Analytics and In-Memory Processing
For platforms like Apache Spark or SAP HANA, the ES-9000 provides the necessary memory footprint to hold terabytes of working data in RAM, drastically reducing reliance on slower disk I/O. The high core count accelerates map-reduce operations.
3.5 Cloud Infrastructure Gateways
In private cloud deployments, this server acts as a robust foundation for OpenStack or Kubernetes control planes, capable of managing thousands of tenant workloads due to its high I/O throughput and resilience features (redundant power, RAID).
4. Comparison with Similar Configurations
To contextualize the ES-9000 series, we compare it against two common alternatives: a single-socket density server (ES-1000 series) and a higher-density GPU-focused server (ES-9500 Accelerator).
4.1 Key Configuration Comparison Table
| Feature | ES-9000 Series (Dual Socket) | ES-1000 Series (Single Socket Density) | ES-9500 (Accelerator Node) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Max Cores | 120 | 64 | 96 (CPU) + 4 (GPU) |
| Max RAM Capacity | 8 TB | 4 TB | 4 TB (Shared with GPU VRAM) |
| Max Internal NVMe Bays | 24 | 12 | 8 (Optimized for U.2) |
| PCIe Gen Capability | Gen5 | Gen5 | Gen5 (Heavy emphasis on x16 slots) |
| Primary Strength | Balanced Performance and Capacity | Power Efficiency and Footprint Reduction | Peak Computational Throughput (AI/ML) |
| Typical Use Case | Enterprise Virtualization, Database | Web Serving, Edge Computing | Deep Learning Training, HPC Simulation |
4.2 Performance Trade-Off Analysis
- **Against Single-Socket Density (ES-1000):** While the ES-1000 consumes less power per unit and offers better core-per-watt ratios for low-utilization tasks, the ES-9000 offers nearly double the total thread count and significantly higher aggregate memory bandwidth (due to having twice the memory channels), making it superior for latency-insensitive, high-throughput applications. The ES-1000 often sacrifices I/O capacity for density.
- **Against Accelerator Nodes (ES-9500):** The ES-9500 sacrifices general-purpose CPU/RAM capacity to dedicate most of its PCIe lanes and power budget to accelerators (GPUs/FPGAs). The ES-9000 is the preferred choice when the bottleneck is CPU computation or memory access (e.g., traditional database workloads), whereas the ES-9500 is required when the workload benefits from massive parallelization inherent in Accelerated Computing.
The ES-9000 series occupies the critical middle ground: maximum flexibility and high raw performance without committing entirely to specialized acceleration hardware. Server Selection Criteria must precisely align with workload requirements.
5. Maintenance Considerations
Proper maintenance protocols are essential to ensure the longevity and sustained high performance of the ES-9000 platform, particularly given its high power draw and component density.
5.1 Thermal Management and Airflow
The greatest maintenance challenge is maintaining optimal thermal conditions.
1. **Intake Air Temperature:** The ambient intake air temperature must not exceed 35°C (95°F) under full load. Exceeding this threshold will trigger aggressive fan speed increases, leading to higher power consumption and potential long-term fan degradation. Refer to Data Center Cooling Standards (ASHRAE A1/A2). 2. **Component Seating:** Due to high vibration tolerance requirements, all DIMMs, PCIe cards, and drive carriers must utilize locking mechanisms correctly. Loose components can cause intermittent connection errors or thermal hotspots. 3. **Dust Accumulation:** High-speed fans pull significant air volume. Regular inspection (quarterly in dusty environments) of heatsinks and fan blades for dust accumulation is required to prevent airflow impedance.
5.2 Power Redundancy and Monitoring
The dual 2000W power supplies must be connected to separate Power Distribution Units (PDUs) fed from different electrical phases or independent Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) systems to ensure true redundancy.
- **PSU Monitoring:** The Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) must be configured to alert on any PSU failure or efficiency degradation (e.g., dropping from Titanium to Platinum efficiency rating).
- **Load Balancing:** While the system supports N+1 redundancy, for maximum uptime assurance, the load should ideally be distributed evenly across both PSUs (50/50 split) when operating under normal conditions.
5.3 Firmware and Driver Lifecycle Management
The ES-9000 relies heavily on the coordination between the System BIOS/UEFI, the BMC firmware (e.g., Redfish implementation), and the integrated RAID controller firmware.
- **Update Cadence:** A strict quarterly review of firmware updates is recommended. Critical updates often address memory compatibility issues (especially with 256GB LRDIMMs) or security vulnerabilities affecting the Trusted Platform Module (TPM).
- **Driver Validation:** Drivers for the storage controller (HBA/RAID) and network interface cards (NICs) must be validated against the host operating system release prior to deployment, as mismatched drivers can lead to I/O throttling or unexpected disconnects under heavy load.
5.4 Storage Replacement Procedures
Hot-swapping drives requires adherence to specific procedures to maintain RAID array integrity:
1. **Pre-Failure Verification:** If a drive is flagged as degraded, the system should be placed in a maintenance window if possible. The recommended replacement procedure is to initiate a manual offline rebuild preparation if the array supports it, though standard hot-swap usually handles this automatically. 2. **Drive Removal:** Press the release latch fully. Wait for the carrier LED to turn off (indicating the controller has relinquished bus control) before physically extracting the drive. 3. **Replacement:** Insert the new drive firmly until the latch clicks. The system will automatically begin the rebuild process. Monitor the rebuild status via the BMC interface. A full rebuild on a 4TB NVMe drive can take several hours and will impact overall array performance until complete. Data Redundancy Strategies must account for this rebuild window.
5.5 CPU and Memory Upgrades
Upgrading CPUs or RAM requires careful attention to thermal paste application (for CPU replacement) and adherence to the Memory Population Rules. Incorrect population—such as mixing DIMM ranks or failing to populate all memory channels equally across both sockets—will result in degraded performance or system instability, potentially falling back to single-channel memory access modes.
System Diagnostics Tools must be run for a minimum of 48 hours post-upgrade to validate memory integrity and thermal stability under full application load.
Intel-Based Server Configurations
| Configuration | Specifications | Benchmark |
|---|---|---|
| Core i7-6700K/7700 Server | 64 GB DDR4, NVMe SSD 2 x 512 GB | CPU Benchmark: 8046 |
| Core i7-8700 Server | 64 GB DDR4, NVMe SSD 2x1 TB | CPU Benchmark: 13124 |
| Core i9-9900K Server | 128 GB DDR4, NVMe SSD 2 x 1 TB | CPU Benchmark: 49969 |
| Core i9-13900 Server (64GB) | 64 GB RAM, 2x2 TB NVMe SSD | |
| Core i9-13900 Server (128GB) | 128 GB RAM, 2x2 TB NVMe SSD | |
| Core i5-13500 Server (64GB) | 64 GB RAM, 2x500 GB NVMe SSD | |
| Core i5-13500 Server (128GB) | 128 GB RAM, 2x500 GB NVMe SSD | |
| Core i5-13500 Workstation | 64 GB DDR5 RAM, 2 NVMe SSD, NVIDIA RTX 4000 |
AMD-Based Server Configurations
| Configuration | Specifications | Benchmark |
|---|---|---|
| Ryzen 5 3600 Server | 64 GB RAM, 2x480 GB NVMe | CPU Benchmark: 17849 |
| Ryzen 7 7700 Server | 64 GB DDR5 RAM, 2x1 TB NVMe | CPU Benchmark: 35224 |
| Ryzen 9 5950X Server | 128 GB RAM, 2x4 TB NVMe | CPU Benchmark: 46045 |
| Ryzen 9 7950X Server | 128 GB DDR5 ECC, 2x2 TB NVMe | CPU Benchmark: 63561 |
| EPYC 7502P Server (128GB/1TB) | 128 GB RAM, 1 TB NVMe | CPU Benchmark: 48021 |
| EPYC 7502P Server (128GB/2TB) | 128 GB RAM, 2 TB NVMe | CPU Benchmark: 48021 |
| EPYC 7502P Server (128GB/4TB) | 128 GB RAM, 2x2 TB NVMe | CPU Benchmark: 48021 |
| EPYC 7502P Server (256GB/1TB) | 256 GB RAM, 1 TB NVMe | CPU Benchmark: 48021 |
| EPYC 7502P Server (256GB/4TB) | 256 GB RAM, 2x2 TB NVMe | CPU Benchmark: 48021 |
| EPYC 9454P Server | 256 GB RAM, 2x2 TB NVMe |
Order Your Dedicated Server
Configure and order your ideal server configuration
Need Assistance?
- Telegram: @powervps Servers at a discounted price
⚠️ *Note: All benchmark scores are approximate and may vary based on configuration. Server availability subject to stock.* ⚠️