Quanta Computer is one of those large server vendors that have a significant market presence in the top 50 customers of servers, but are working to expand that presence down market. With the Intel Xeon E5 V3/ V4 generation, Quanta, through its QCT arm, started expanding its sales push down market to smaller buyers with standard servers. At the new Intel Xeon Scalable Processor launch, QCT released its “2nd Generation” servers.
A Quick Background on “2nd Generation”
When someone sees 2nd Generation they may think that QCT is a new entry into the server market. We just wanted to Quanta Computer has revenues measured in the tens of billions of dollars and has been designing and manufacturing servers for many years. It launched Quanta Cloud Technology (QCT) to expand markets to become a more traditional direct server vendor.
This is one of those times when you can read “2nd Generation” to really mean “2nd Generation for our QCT subsidiary after we were selling servers, storage, and networking gear to hyper-scale clients totaling in the tens of billions of USD per year.”
With HPE touting ProLiant Gen10 and Dell EMC pushing a 14th Generation PowerEdge, this is an important distinction.
While total company data center revenue wise Quanta Computer is competitive with traditional players, its QCT arm aims to take the technology and make it more accessible.
New QCT 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable Servers
Like other vendors, QCT is releasing an initial set of servers with the Intel Xeon Scalable launch, with several additional models announced.
We did get to see the new generation of servers at Computex 2017 in Taipei. We were not allowed to take detailed photos. What we can share is that internally, these servers look like a combination of hyper-scale expansion and serviceability with enterprise style features. For example, QCT servers utilize standard OCP mezzanine networking cards. They also have traditional front hot swap bays and standard data center power redundant PDUs.
One machine that we wanted to highlight is the QuantaPlex T42SP-2U. This is a 2U, 4-node, system. With this generation, we are seeing a stronger push towards replacing traditional SATA drives with NVMe and the QuantaPlex T42SP-2U supports up to 6x NVMe U.2 drives per system. It also utilizes the 6+2 RAM configuration to provide up to 8 DIMMs per CPU, matching previous generation systems yet adding additional DRAM channels over previous generations. Owing to its hyper scale roots, QCT has some unique features such as a tool-less power distribution board replacement. PDBs are a relatively higher failure rate component in NVMe systems so it is great to see QCT innovating on servicing them.
Overall, QCT has a great new portfolio if you are looking for a larger scale deployment. Check out their new servers linked above.
If you want to learn more about the Intel Xeon Scalable Processor family, we have the complete resource here Intel Xeon Scalable Processor Family (Skylake-SP) Launch Coverage Central.
