Top Competitive Selling Points for System x3550 M3
(As of October 5, 2012)

A highly energy-efficient, two-socket rack server that offers high performance and exceptional reliability

The x3550 M3 offers:

• 32-nm Intel 5600 “Westmere-EP” processors featuring fast processing combined with excellent energy efficiency. These processors also feature Dynamic Resource Scaling that will put to sleep any unused cores, giving the remaining processors access to all of the cache, and Turbo Boost that allows cores to operate at higher-than-stated frequencies when operating below power and thermal design points.
• Enhanced virtualization with Intel Trusted Execution Technology (TXT), providing hardware-based mechanisms that help protect against software-based attacks by sectioning off application environments.
• Up to 288 GB (18 DIMMs) of DDR3 RDIMMs with ECC or up to 48 GB (12 DIMMs) of DDR3 UDIMMs with ECC, including new 1.35V low-voltage RDIMMs and UDIMMs.
• 6 Gb/s or 3 Gb/s controllers with hardware-based RAID 0 and 1 (model dependent). An upgrade to RAID 6 or 60 is also available.
• Support for four or eight 2.5-inch SAS/SATA/SSD drives with an optional DVD for the four-drive model. Intermixing of SAS/SATA/SSD is allowed.
• Extreme energy efficiency with optional 40 W processors, low-voltage DIMMs, 92%- and 94%-efficient power supplies, an energy smart design, counter-rotating fans, an altimeter to regulate fan rotation, and IBM Active Energy Manager power monitoring and control.
• An advanced Integrated Management Module (IMM) that enables remote control to manage, monitor, and troubleshoot servers from any location. It has all the functionality of a BMC/RSA-II in addition to an integrated video controller, a remote presence/cKVM function, and Super I/O. The IMM is common across all new IBM x86 servers.
• A TPM chip, which is a coprocessor that can hold cryptographic keys that protect information.
• Two high-speed PCI Express x16 slots, providing performance scalability for business growth. These slots are convertible to PCI-X/133 MHz slots with an optional riser card. Support for PCI Express and PCI-X makes the transition easier for legacy card users.
• UEFI as a common management interface across all of IBM’s new System x platforms, replacing BIOS.
• An optional IBM Virtual Media Key for additional systems-management capabilities, including:
• Web-based out-of-band control
• Virtual floppy and optical drive support
• Windows “blue screen” error capture
• LDAP and SSL support
• Remote redirection of PCI video, keyboard, and mouse (cKVM)
• Five USB flash ports, including an internal USB port for virtualization and security/authentication needs.
• Hot-swap and redundant 92%-efficient power supplies that help to reduce downtime.
• Enhanced Predictive Failure Analysis, which helps decrease planned and unplanned server downtime for improved reliability and maximum utilization.
• Light-Path Diagnostics, which helps speed up diagnosis of failures by providing a lighted path to problem components, minimizing maintenance expense and downtime.
• IBM ToolsCenter, which provides a single website for creating bootable media (CD, DVD, or USB) with updates customized for customers’ systems.
• Integrated dual-port Gigabit Ethernet with TOE, with an option to add two additional ports.
• IBM Systems Director at no additional cost, which delivers a single interface for managing both physical and virtual resources.

ServerProven Compatibility for the x3550 M3 (7944):

http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/serverproven/compat/us/xseries/7944.html