Inspur NF5280M6 2U Intel Xeon Server Review

Inspur NF5280M6 Block Diagram

Since there are a lot of configuration options in the NF5280M6, it is worth showing the block diagram.

Here we can how the two Intel CPUs, the Lewisburg Refresh PCH, the ASPEED AST2500, and the Altera (Intel) MAX 10 FPGA are all connected and the I/O they provide to the rest of the system.

Next, let us move on to the management.

Inspur Systems NF5280M6 Management

Inspur’s primary management is via IPMI and Redfish APIs. We have shown this before, so we are not going to go into too much extra, but will have a recap here. That is what most hyperscale and CSP customers will utilize to manage their systems. Inspur also includes a robust and customized web management platform with its management solution.

There are key features we would expect from any modern server. These include the ability to power cycle a system and remotely mount virtual media. Inspur also has a HTML5 iKVM solution that has these features included. Some other server vendors do not have fully-featured HTML5 iKVM including virtual media support as of this review being published.

Another feature worth noting is the ability to set BIOS settings via the web interface. That is a feature we see in solutions from top-tier vendors like Dell EMC, HPE, and Lenovo, but many vendors in the market do not have.

Another web management feature that differentiates Inspur from lower-tier OEMs is the ability to create virtual disks and manage storage directly from the web management interface. Some solutions allow administrators to do this via Redfish APIs, but not web management. This is another great inclusion here.

Based on comments in our previous articles, many of our readers have not used an Inspur Systems server and therefore have not seen the management interface. We have an 8-minute video clicking through the interface and doing a quick tour of the Inspur Systems management interface:

It is certainly not the most entertaining subject, however, if you are considering these systems, you may want to know what the web management interface is on each machine and that tour can be helpful.

In addition to the web management interface, we have also covered Inspur AIStation for AI Cluster Operations Management Solution.

Inspur has an entire cluster-level solution to manage models, data, users, as well as the machines that they run on. For an AI training server like this, that is an important capability. We are going to direct you to that article for more on this solution.

Next, let us discuss performance.

Inspur NF5280M6 Performance

In terms of performance, we wanted to test higher-end SKUs to ensure the system has adequate cooling. Modern systems, if they have insufficient cooling, will see CPUs throttle down and that will have a negative impact on performance. Verifying the top-end of the CPU TDP range helps us see if the server has enough cooling to run the entire SKU stack at full performance. As such, we just wanted to do a quick comparison to our baseline with processors to ensure performance and cooling were acceptable.

Overall, it seems like the NF5280M6 is performing as it should. We also should take a quick note that since this is an Intel Xeon Scalable “Ice Lake” system there are accelerators for AI inference, crypto offload, and HPC that we recently looked at. You can see that piece here.

Next, we are going to get to power consumption, the STH Server Spider, and our final words.