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Dell PowerEdge M420 Blade Server - System Overview

Description

Dell M420 blade server 2-bay chassis front detail

The PowerEdge M420 delivers exceptional density with consistent reliable performance. Dell's easy to use management tools enhance the reliability of this blade server and enable administrators to easily manage the system individually or collectively. The M1000e can accommodate up to 32 quarter-height server nodes in a 10U space to deliver tremendous processing power, memory capacity, and I/O throughput. Power, cooling, and networking are handled at the enclosure level.

Performance

The Dell M420 is an ultra-dense quarter-height server blade featuring Intel's C600 chipset to support a maximum of two next generation Xeon processors. Administrators can specify either the E5-2400 or E5-2400 v2 product families with up to 10-cores per processor.

Memory

There are six DIMM slots that support a maximum of 192GB of memory using 32GB DDR3 memory modules. Transfer speeds of up to 1600MT/s are supported depending on your choice of processor and memory. The M420 blade server can be loaded with unbuffered DIMM (UDIMM) and registered DIMM (RDIMM) modules, but they cannot be mixed. With UDIMM modules, the system will only support up to 24GB of memory. Flexible memory configurations are also supported.

Storage

Each M420 blade server supports a maximum of two uSATA 1.8-inch SSD drives. There is also an embedded PERC H310 RAID controller. For more storage, look to Dell's line of direct attached storage (DAS), network attached storage (NAS), internal SCSI (iSCUSI) or Fiber channel (FC). There is also a new DAS storage module for the M1000e enclosure, the EqualLogic PS-M4110, which can be used in conjunction with supported network switches and blade servers for a converged network solution.

Dell M420 blade server 2-bay chassis front close up

Expansion

A single PCIe 3.0 x8 slot supports a mezzanine card with two redundant I/O fabrics. The M420 server blade features an embedded dual-port 10Gb LOM (LAN on Motherboard). There are also several options for network connectivity, Ethernet, Fibre Channel, and InfiniBand Connections.

Management

Dell enables the blades to be managed in physical, virtual, local, and remote environments using iDRAC7 (integrated Dell remote Access Controller) with LifeCycle Controller for this particular module. To connect to third party management solutions, Dell's OpenManage allows Administrators to maintain a single point of contact over the network environment by easily integrating with existing management solutions. The Chassis Management Controller (CMC) located on the M1000e chassis, gives Administrators the ability to manage up to nine M1000e chassis, and up to 288 servers, through a single, embedded agent-less interface—from anywhere in the world.

iDRAC is installed in each of the blades and on the integrated I/O modules. CMC also provides a single point of connection from the management network to iDRAC, once again simplifying the complexities of managing the network.

Summary

The PowerEdge M420 server blade is a very capable and densely packed quarter-height node that is ideal for datacenters, high-node count virtualization, and high-performance computing. Each blade is individually serviceable and offers dual hot-pluggable, solid-state-drives to maximize reliability.

Dell PowerEdge M420 Blade Server - Specifications

Processor - 2 Socket

    Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2400 product family
    Intel QuickPath Interconnect (QPI): 6.4GT/s, 7.2GT/s, 8.0GT/s
    Cashe:

  • 2.5MB per core
  • Core options: 4, 6, 8

Operating System

  • Microsoft Windows Server® 2012
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Essentials
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, x64 (includes Hyper-V® v2)
  • Novell® SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server
  • Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®
  • Virtualization options:

  • Citrix® XenServer®
  • VMware® vSphere® ESX™ and ESXi™
  • Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization®

Chipset

    Intel C600

Memory

    Up to 192GB
    Up to 1600MT/s DDR3 memory
    6 DIMM slots: 2GB/4GB/8GB/16GB/32GB

Embedded Hypervisor (Optional)

  • Two internal SD cards dedicated for hypervisor
  • One SD card dedicated for vFlash media support

Storage

    Hot-plug hard drive options:

  • Up to two 1.8” uSATA SSD drives (50GB and 200GB)

I/O Mezzanine Card Options

    Ethernet:

  • Broadcom 5719 Quad Port 1Gb
  • Intel I350 Quad Port 1Gb
  • 1Gb/10Gb adapters:

  • Brocade® BR1741M-k Dual Port 10Gb CNA
  • QLogic® QME8262-k Dual Port 10Gb KR CNA
  • Broadcom 57810S-k Dual Port 10Gb KR
  • Intel Ethernet X520-x/k Dual Port 10Gb
  • Intel I350 Quad Port 1Gb
  • Broadcom 5719 Quad Port 1Gb
  • Fibre channel:

  • QLogic QME2662 (FC16)
  • Emulex® LPm16002B-D (FC16)
  • QLogic QME2572 (FC8)
  • Emulex LPe1205-M (FC8)
  • InfiniBand:

  • Mellanox® ConnectX®-3 SFF FDR10

RAID Controller

    Internal controllers:

  • PERC H310

NIC/LOM

    Embedded Broadcom® 57810S-k Dual Port 10Gb LOM

Power

    Supplied by M1000e Blade Enclosure

Chassis

    USB ports

  • 2 front
  • I/O slots

  • One PCIe 3.0 x8 fully populated mezzanine card slot and switch modules yields 2 redundant I/O fabrics per blade
  • Form factor

  • Quarter-height blade

Management

    Remote management

  • iDRAC7 with Lifecycle Controller for Blades (default)
  • iDRAC7 Enterprise with Lifecycle Controller (upgrade option)
  • Systems management

  • IPMI 2.0 compliant
  • Dell OpenManage™ Essentials and Dell Management Console
  • Dell OpenManage Power Center
  • Dell OpenManage Connections:
    • OpenManage Integration Suite for Microsoft® System Center
    • Dell plug-in for VMware® vCenter™
    • HP Operations Manager
    • IBM Tivoli® Netcool®
    • CA Network and Systems Management

Dell PowerEdge M420 Blade Server - Documentation

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