HPE Superdome X

 

What is the HPE Superdome X?

The Superdome X is an enterprise level x86 server that’s designed to support mission critical workloads that require maximum scalability and reliability. It is intended to run the most resource intensive business processing, decision support, virtualization and database workloads, including SQL Server, SAP and Oracle. The Integrity Superdome X consists of a single compute enclosure containing one to eight BL920s Gen8 or Gen9+ blades as well as interconnect modules, manageability modules, fans, power supplies, and an integrated LCD Insight Display. The Insight

Display can be used for basic enclosure maintenance and displays the overall enclosure health. The compute enclosure supports four XFMs that provide the crossbar fabric which carries data between blades.

To service any internal compute enclosure component, complete the following steps
in order:
1. Power off the partition.
2. Power off all XFMs.
3. Disconnect the power cables from the lower power supplies.
4. Disconnect the power cables from the upper power supplies.

Each BL920s server blade contains two x86 processors and up to 48 DIMMs. Server blades and partitions Integrity Superdome X supports multiple nPartitions of 2, 4, 6, 8, 12, or 16 sockets (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, or 8 blades). Each nPartition must include blades of the same type but the system can include nPartitions with different blade types.

Integrity Superdome X provides I/O through mezzanine cards and FlexLOMs on individual server blades. Each BL920s blade has two FLB slots and three Mezzanine slots.

The Integrity Superdome X compute enclosure supports two power input modules, using either single phase or 3-phase power cords. Connecting two AC sources to each power input module provides 2N redundancy for AC input and DC output of the power supplies. There are 12 power supplies per Integrity Superdome X compute enclosure. Six power supplies are installed in the upper section of the enclosure, and six power supplies are installed in the lower section of the enclosure.

Isn’t the Superdome X an Itanium server?

No. HPE markets a separate server called the Integrity Superdome 2 that is built around the Itanium chip and it runs HP-UX. The HPE Superdome X is an x86 server that uses the Intel Xeon Processor E7 v3 processor family and it runs SLES, RHEL, Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2, VMware vSphere and CentOS. It will also be certified for Windows Server 2016 when Microsoft releases it.

What is the maximum scalability of the Superdome X?

The HPE Superdome X provides extreme scalability. In its maximum configuration it can support up to 16 sockets and 288 cores. You can configure the Superdome X with one to eight scalable BL920 Gen9 x86 blades. The maximum memory capacity is 3 TB per blade for a total of 24 TB of RAM for a fully configured Superdome X server.  SQL Server 2016 can scale to consume all of these cores and with Windows Server 2016, scalability will be up to 640 cores.

What availability features does the Superdome X have?

The HPE Superdome X is designed to provide five nines (99.999 percent) of availability. All key Superdome X hardware components are redundant and hot-swappable. This includes components like power supplies, fans, and I/O switches. The Superdome X uses a “firmware first” architecture that is able to contain errors in the firmware before any corrupted data can reach the OS. In addition, the built-in Error Analysis Engine (EAE) constantly analyzes all possible hardware faults, predicts errors and can automatically initiate recovery actions without any operator actions.

What are nPars?

The Superdome X supports multiple hardware partitions that are called nPars. Each nPar partition can be completely electrically isolated from the other partitions. Using the HPE Superdome X nPar technology, you can effectively run multiple diverse workloads on the same server system and those workloads will not interfere with one another. For instance, you can run an instance of the SQL Server relational database in one partition and SQL Server Analysis Services and Reporting Services in another partition. Even though these workloads have very different characteristics, they would be completely isolated from one another just as if they were running on separate systems.

Which virtualization technologies are supported with Superdome X?

Superdome X is certified for Hyper-V, VMware vSphere, and KVM/RHEV virtualization.

HPE Integrity Superdome X Management
see the entire Superdome X system through the Superdome Onboard Administrator (OA).
•    iLO Management—remote access the individual servers
•    HPE System Update Manager—firmware management and system updates system updates.
•    HPE Insight Remote Support (7.x) software—24x7 remote monitoring, automated case creation, diagnosis, notifications, and connectivity to HPE Support.
•    HPE Insight Online and the mobile dashboard—monitor device health and alerts, contract and warranties, or service credits.