Gigabyte release two new NVMe servers today. Both servers incorporate slots for the latest 2.5″ NVMe drive technology. Gigabyte released both servers at Supercomputing 2015. One is a higher density 4 node in 2U design. There is also a 1U with solid storage options including 8x SAS/ SATA and 2x NVMe drives. We have several 4-in-2U designs deployed as they are significantly more space and power efficient than standard 1U or 2U servers and use fewer outlets. It is great that we are seeing vendors innovate and add 2.5″ NVMe support to these chassis. Adding NVMe drive support is significantly more difficult than adding standard SATA or SAS SSD support because NVMe drives can consume 25W each adding to the power and cooling load on the system. In the Gigabyte H27N-H70 this is especially true because the NVMe drives can add up to 200w of additional power and cooling needs to the system.
Gigabyte H27N-H70 – Quad node 2U server
The first server released today is the Gigabyte H27N-H70 which incorporates 4 compute nodes in a single 2U chassis, greatly improving density.
Chassis specs
- 2U 4 nodes high density system
- Supports the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 V3 product family
- 64 x RDIMM/LRDIMM ECC DIMM slots
- 8 x 2.5″ hot-swappable NVMe bays
- 8 x 2.5″ hot-swappable SAS/SATA 6Gb/s bays
- 4 x Half-length low-profile + 4 mezzanine card slots for expansion cards
- 8 x GbE LAN ports (Intel I350)
- 2 x 1600W 80 PLUS Platinum 100~220V AC redundant PSUs
- Complete remote management functions via IPMI 2.0 web interface and iKVM
Per node specs
- 2x Intel Xeon E5-2600 V3
- 16 x RDIMM/LRDIMM ECC DIMM slots
- 2 x 2.5″ hot-swappable NVMe bays
- 2 x 2.5″ hot-swappable SAS/SATA 6Gb/s bays
- 1 x Half-length low-profile + 1 mezzanine card slots for expansion per node
- 2 x GbE LAN ports (Intel I350)
Overall this is a fairly standard offering set for a 4-in-2U design but the addition of NVMe to the mix makes it extremely interesting.
Gigabyte R18N-F2A 2x NVMe 8x SATA server
Gigabyte is also releasing a new NVMe 1U server that can handle two NVMe 2.5″ drives and 8x SATA or SAS drives. We have seen more storage software vendors start to recognize NVMe as a different class of storage and try using commodity SATA drives for low cost storage and NVMe drives for journaling/ log and cache devices.
Key specifications
- 2x Intel Xeon E5-2600 V3 support
- 24 x RDIMM/LRDIMM ECC DIMM slots
- 2 x 2.5″ hot-swappable NVMe bays
- 8 x 2.5″ hot-swappable SAS/SATA 6Gb/s bays
- 2 x Half-length full-height slots + 1 x Half-length low-profile or 1 x mezzanine card slots for expansion cards
- 2 x GbE LAN ports (Intel I350-BT2)
- 2 x 800W 80 PLUS Platinum 100~220V AC redundant PSUs
- Complete remote management functions via IPMI 2.0 web interface and iKVM
