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The Lenovo ThinkSystem SR950 server is designed for your most demanding, mission-critical workloads, such as in-memory databases, large transactional databases, batch and real-time analytics, ERP, CRM, and virtualized server workloads. Now supporting second-generation Intel Xeon Scalable Family processors, the powerful 4U ThinkSystem SR950 can grow from two to eight processors, and with 96 DIMM sockets, supports up to 24 TB of high-speed memory. The SR950 also now supports Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory for the ultimate in performance. The modular design of SR950 speeds upgrades and servicing with easy front or rear access to all major subsystems to maximize server availability.
The SR950 packs numerous fault-tolerant and high-availability features into a high-density, 4U rack-optimized design that reduces the space needed to support massive network computing operations and simplify servicing.
Configure to Order
The Lenovo ThinkSystem SR950 server is designed for your most demanding, mission-critical workloads, such as in-memory databases, large transactional databases, batch and real-time analytics, ERP, CRM, and virtualized server workloads. Now supporting second-generation Intel Xeon Scalable Family processors, the powerful 4U ThinkSystem SR950 can grow from two to eight processors, and with 96 DIMM sockets, supports up to 24 TB of high-speed memory. The SR950 also now supports Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory for the ultimate in performance. The modular design of SR950 speeds upgrades and servicing with easy front or rear access to all major subsystems to maximize server availability.
The SR950 packs numerous fault-tolerant and high-availability features into a high-density, 4U rack-optimized design that reduces the space needed to support massive network computing operations and simplify servicing.
Configure to Order
The SR950 server supports up to eight processors in a single 4U chassis. You can upgrade from a 2-socket system to an 8-socket system without having to replace the server enclosure or upgrade to a physically larger design. The SR950 offers enterprise scalability and advanced RAS features to support the most demanding mission-critical applications that require 24×7 operations.
The Lenovo ThinkSystem SR950 server is designed for your most demanding, CPU and memory intensive, mission-critical workloads, such as in-memory databases, large transactional databases, batch and real-time analytics, ERP, CRM, and virtualized server workloads. The powerful 4U ThinkSystem SR950 can grow from two to eight second-generation Intel Xeon Processor Scalable Family CPUs, delivering up to 36% total performance improvement over the first generation processor (based on Intel internal testing). The modular design of SR950 speeds upgrades and servicing with easy front and rear access to all major subsystems, to maximize server uptime.
Scalability and performance
The SR950 offers numerous features to boost performance, improve scalability, and reduce costs:
The SR950 is based on a modular service model where all components and options can be removed from the front or rear of the system, even parts that are located in the center of the machine such as fans, memory DIMMs, and processors. The SR950 is designed for 99.99% availability.
Watch the following video to show how easy it is to service the SR950 server:
https://lenovopress.com/lp0899-thinksystem-sr950-ease-of-service-video
The SR950 provides many features to simplify serviceability and increase system uptime:
Powerful systems management features simplify local and remote management of the SR950:
The SR950 offers the following energy-efficiency features to save energy, reduce operational costs, and increase energy availability:
The following figure shows the front of the SR950 server.
Figure 2. Front view of the Lenovo ThinkSystem SR950
The following figure shows the rear of the SR950 server. The server has up to 17 PCIe slots, depending on the riser cards selected, and the number of processors installed.
Figure 3. Rear view of the Lenovo ThinkSystem SR950
The processors and other components are located on compute trays, the Upper Compute Tray and the Lower Compute Tray. Each compute tray holds up to four processors on two system boards. The compute trays are accessible from the front of the server, as shown in the following figure.
Figure 4. Lower Compute Tray partially removed
The server has one or two compute trays. Each compute tray contains:
The following figure shows the rear of the compute tray with its two compute system boards, one of them removed.
Figure 5. Compute tray with two compute system boards
The compute system board is shown in the following figure. Each system board holds two processors and 24 DIMM sockets, 12 per processor. The system board also has connections for the NVMe ports used to connect to the PCIe NVMe drive bays at the front of the server.
Figure 6. Compute system board
Processors installed in the compute system boards are numbered as shown in the following figure.
Figure 7. Processor numbering (viewed from the rear of the compute trays)
For some four-socket storage-rich configurations, a storage tray is used in the upper tray area instead of a compute tray. The following figure shows the key components of the storage tray.
All slots and ports at the rear of the server are housed in the I/O tray as shown in the following figure.
The following figure shows the architecture of the SR950 at a high level. The system boards with processors and memory are installed in compute trays along with the drive bays and storage adapter. The I/O board houses all onboard PCIe slots as well as the slots for the riser cards the offer the remaining PCIe slots.
The specific connections between system boards, processors and PCIe slots are dependent on the server configuration. This is described in detail in the Server configurations section. Specific processor-slot connections based on each configuration are described in the Slot availability by server configuration section.
The following figure shows System board 1 where processors 1 and 2 are installed. The slots on the I/O board are connected directly to these processors (or indirectly through the Intel C624 Platform Controller Hub, PCH).
Figure 11. System board 1 connections to the I/O board
The processors within the chassis communicate via UltraPath Interconnect (UPI) ports. These ports allow high speed communication between the CPUs. UPI replaces the Intel QuickPath Interconnect (QPI). One UPI link connects the two processors on each system board (UPI 3) and the other two UPI links are used to connect the other processors in adjacent boards to form four-way and larger systems.
In four-processor configurations, the design of the UPI links is either in a mesh or a ring topology. When a processor has 3 UPI ports, it can be used in a 4-socket mesh configuration where all processors are directly connected to every other processor. 5200 Series processors only have 2 UPI ports (ports 1 and 2) and therefore do not support mesh topology. These two UPI configurations are shown in the following figure.
Figure 12. Mesh (left) and Ring (right) topologies for four-socket configurations
Ring topology with 8200 Series processors: As discussed in the Server configurations section, the “Four-Socket Upgradable / Storage Rich” configuration is a four-socket configuration that uses a Ring topology but uses 8200 Series processors.
The server supports an 8-socket configuration (8200 Series processors required). The following figure shows the UPI links used to connect eight processors.
Refer to the processor options table for information on the number UPI links each processor option has for the SR950 system.