Your projects involve analyzing petabytes of genomic data and running complex molecular dynamics simulations. One simulation can take weeks to complete on a typical desktop. With grants and deadlines to meet, you need processing prowess you can count on.
Once you power up the 2U server, you will be immediately impressed by its processing capabilities. With up to two Intel Xeon Scalable processors and up to 1TB of RAM, you know this machine has the muscle to handle even your most demanding workloads. Whether you need to quickly compile large codebases, process huge datasets, or run resource-intensive simulations, this server has more than enough computing grunt under the hood.
Let’s take a closer look at 10 2U server features for demanding workloads.
1. Maximize Performance with High-Core CPUs
With so many CPU cores at your disposal, you can spread out parallel tasks and maximize 2U server throughput. CPU-intensive processes that once took hours are now completed in a fraction of the time.
- As a computational chemist, your work involves simulating molecular interactions and screening virtual libraries of drug compounds. These simulations require crunching vast amounts of data using computationally heavy algorithms like density functional theory. In the past, a single simulation would occupy your entire cluster for a week.
- Now, with the dual 28-core CPUs, you’re able to farm out multiple independent simulations simultaneously. Each CPU core grabs a simulation to work on, processing pieces of data in parallel. What once took a week can now be completed in just a couple days. You’ve doubled your research throughput without doubling your infrastructure costs.
- You’ve also implemented hyper-threading on the CPUs, further multiplying their logical cores. Computation-heavy portions of your simulations that can utilize hyper-threading see an additional performance boost.
With hyper-threading, some steps complete nearly twice as fast compared to single-threaded 1U rack execution. The increased parallelism has revolutionized your research workflow.
2. Abundant Memory for Data-Heavy Tasks
This 2U server packs an enormous 1TB of DDR4 RAM, allowing you to load massive datasets entirely into fast system memory. You no longer suffer from the performance penalties of disk I/O, as all your working data resides in RAM. Memory-hungry applications like in-memory databases now fly with terabytes of active data in memory.
- As a data scientist for an autonomous vehicle startup, your workloads involve training enormous deep learning models on petabytes of sensor data. The models have billions of parameters, requiring loading gigantic training datasets into memory. Your previous tower servers could only accommodate datasets that fit in their paltry 128GB of RAM. This meant your datasets had to spill frequently onto disk, hampering training performance.
- Now with 1TB of RAM, your largest dataset, consuming 800 GB, easily fits in memory. With the entire dataset RAM-resident, the deep learning framework can iterate over the data at maximum speed without any disk I/O bottlenecks. Training a model that previously took 2 weeks is now completed in under 3 days.
- You’re also able to load multiple datasets simultaneously and even perform data augmentation on the fly during training. These kinds of in-memory operations were impossible before. With a single 1TB RAM upgrade, you’ve removed the worst performance roadblock holding back your AI research.
The breakthroughs you’re now making would not be possible without such a generously large memory capacity.
3. Flexible Storage to Suit Your Needs
With multiple drive bay options and a wide variety of storage media supported, you enjoy great flexibility in building out the 2U blade server’s storage configuration.
4. Mix and Match Drive Types
You can mix SAS, SATA, and NVMe drives in the same system, allowing you to optimize for performance, capacity or cost. Frequently accessed data can reside on speedy NVMe drives, while your large archive lives on high-capacity SATA or SAS.
- Load Up with Drives
The 2U rack form factor supports up to 24 2.5″ drive bays, so you can pack in up to 24TB of storage using 1TB SATA drives. With this much internal capacity, you can consolidate multiple applications and databases onto one powerful server.
5. External Storage Too
Don’t want to use up all your bays? The server offers plenty of PCIe slots for adding external storage via SAS HBAs or NVMe RAID cards. You get the best of both worlds: massive internal capacity with unlimited external expansion.
6. Robust I/O Connectivity
With its advanced I/O subsystem, you get high-speed connectivity to all your external devices and networks.
- Future-Proof Networking
Dual 10GbE and optional 100GbE ports future-proof your networking with plenty of bandwidth headroom for growth. You can also add additional NICs via PCIe.
7. Dense Expansion
The server board provides multiple PCIe slots, allowing you to load up on extra SAS HBAs, NVMe RAID cards, InfiniBand adapters or anything else you need. You have the slots to fully customize the I/O setup.
8. Front Access for Easy Swaps
A front-accessible PCIe slot lets you swap out networking or storage cards without having to pull the server from the rack. Critical upgrades and maintenance become simpler and faster.
- Simplify Management
Out of the box, you get advanced management tools that make administering the powerful 2U server a breeze.
9. Remote Keyboard, Video, and Mouse
The integrated IPMI controller allows you to remotely access the server’s BIOS and virtual media through your web browser. You can easily mount an ISO image or reboot an unresponsive system from the other side of the world.
- Automate Tasks with Scripting
The IPMI also supports scripting via popular languages like Python and Ruby. You write simple scripts to automate repetitive tasks like OS patching, application deployment or backup jobs across all your 2U rack hosts.
10. Deep System Insights
Comprehensive hardware monitoring gives you visibility into temperatures, fan speeds, voltages and more. Quickly spot any developing issues before they become problems.
- Reliability You Can Depend On
You need a server that you can fully rely on to work flawlessly for years. - Full-Metal Construction
The all-aluminum chassis conducts heat efficiently while providing better protection than plastic. Your valuable investment stays better protected in your data center.
Final Words
In conclusion, with its powerful processing, flexible storage, robust I/O, and easy manageability, the 2U server is ideally suited for running your most important and demanding workloads. Its combination of performance, capacity, reliability and availability will ensure your critical applications are always online and running at top speed. For mission-critical computing, you can depend on this 2U workhorse.
