The Cisco UCS series of servers has added new AMD EPYC 7003 “Milan” variants expanding the company’s portfolio. The two new models are the Cisco UCS C245 M6 and UCS C225 M6. At the same time, we were a bit surprised by an existing model that was not upgraded. The Cisco UCS C4200 that we reviewed has not been updated to support Milan.
Cisco UCS C225 M6 1U AMD EPYC 7003 Series
The Cisco UCS C225 M6 is a 1U AMD EPYC 7003 server. Something interesting, and nice on the specs of this server is that it is a 2.5″ only server which makes a lot of sense. Two AMD EPYC 7003 CPUs in 1U with 4x 3.5″ drives would be a bit strange in the Cisco UCS line.
Key specs are:
- 1 or 2 AMD EPYC 7003 CPUs
- 32 DIMM slots (16 DIMMs per CPU socket), 3200 MHZ DDR4
- Up to 10 Small-Form-Factor (SFF) front-loading hot-pluggable drives – NVMe/SAS/SATA
- Up to three PCIe 4.0 slots
- Support for 1400 Series VIC and OCP 3.0 network cards
- RAID controller and GPU options are available
- Internal dual M.2 drive options
Again, we are also seeing Cisco support the OCP NIC 3.0 form factor in this generation along with the Cisco VIC cards. It is always interesting to see Cisco as a leader here in adopting an open networking standard.
Cisco UCS C245 M6 2U AMD EPYC 7003 Series
The other major platform announcement is the Cisco UCS C245 M6. By moving to a 2U form factor we get more than twice the number of storage bays (up to 28) and up to eight PCIe Gen4 slots.
Here are the key specs:
- 1 or 2 AMD EPYC 7003 CPUs
- 32 DIMM slots (16 DIMMs per CPU socket), 3200 MHZ DDR4
- Up to 28 Small-Form-Factor (SFF) front-loading hot-pluggable drives – NVMe/SAS/SATA
- Up to eight PCIe 4.0 slots
- Support for 1400 Series VIC and OCP 3.0 network cards
- RAID controller and GPU options are available
- Internal dual M.2 drive options
Perhaps the one feature we most want to see is the 28x front loading 2.5″ bays here. With a 2U form factor, it is also a bit easier to the higher TDP AMD EPYC 7003 CPUs.
Final Words
Overall, it was surprising to see the UCS C4200 was not updated to the Milan generation yet. At the same time, this somewhat makes sense given the product positioning as well as the TDP requirements to get to the higher-performance SKUs. In the 2U 4-node space, thermals a major concern, and with other systems such as the Dell EMC PowerEdge C6525 we were told that Dell effectively recommends liquid cooling for 280W TDP SKUs. Milan’s higher idle power, and higher overall power, puts more pressure on 2U4N platform cooling. The UCS C4200 we reviewed was based on the EPYC 7001 series, so it is possible that upgrading to Milan would require that system to get a motherboard rev which is why it is not announced yet.
The expansion to the UCS C-series with the new AMD EPYC processor line is good to see. We were expecting this a bit sooner with Dr. Lisa Su, CEO of AMD on the Cisco Systems board.
Per the launch materials, the new AMD EPYC-based M6 servers are “planned for general availability within the next 90 days.” So hopefully we will see these systems in the wild in the next few months. They are going to be in the market after several other vendors have their systems live, but Cisco UCS tends to target a specific customer set.
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I’m sure they will be priced with Cisco’s standard pricing formula…
FP (fair price) x 3.5X = adjusted Cisco price
Why does Cisco make servers anyway?
So your company server room is fully locked in with Cisco
Do they stick out an extra 2 inches in front like their stupid switches do? Super unfriendly to neighboring units.
LOL as if TSMC can ship Epycs – as if anyone even wants them
AMD Epyc – shipping in the dozens of units
Meanwhile Intel shipping in the millions
@Bull, true. true.
hmm, if network integrity and performance is the critical consideration for a large number of installations that only have modest computing requirements but exist as nodes in a sophisticated wan, I can imagine that I would listen to Cisco if they pitched on that basis.
and paying premium has been known to solve problems like availability…
actually if the deal was pay 3.5* the going rate but get per box licensing (lifetime including major release upgrade) of all the software networking stack Cisco sell, I will start listening already…
Can someone fill me in on the norms for hard drives/SSDs? I’m confused by the author’s statement that it would’ve been “strange” for these servers to feature 3.5″ hard drive bays instead of 2.5″. Aren’t 3.5″ drives the norm for servers? That’s what I see in NAS units.
And what is the Small Form Factor (SFF)? Is that the same as 2.5″ or something else? I didn’t see SFF mentioned in specs when I was shopping Xeon D servers.
Looking forward to testing these. What’s great is they’re single CPU optimized, so a single CPU can still use all the IO. Right now you need dual CPU’s to maximize IO.
We run a lot of Cisco UCS and find them to be extremely price competitive. What’s nice is they allow any drives, any ram, and any CPU, nothing is firmware locked. The systems are extremely reliable as well.
Ironically I’m not sure there is much money for them in the UCS line, which is probably why they came out with the Hyperflex stuff that they can license like crazy. They also try to upsell with the ACI stuff.
We had HPE, but moved to UCS. The ability to dynamically provision profiles to hardware is really useful and convenient. The single pane of glass per DC is nice too.
Nate T , I agree , that’s my experience with them too.
Can you comment on the price?
My shop is currently running EOL UCS and NETAPPS.
I have a feeling they will be sticking with them.
We have two UCS’s and 1 NETAPP for storage.
SysEngineers gave a rough number of 100K for the trio.
Which seems a bit extreme.