Lenovo ThinkSystem SR550
A great-value Xeon Scalable server solution with firstclass management tools and support for up to 16 drives
SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £1,858 exc VAT from lenovo.com
Last year Lenovo introduced no fewer than 12 new ThinkSystem servers, ranging from lightweight little 1U file servers to mighty four- and eight-way powerhouses. For cost-conscious SMEs, the dual-socket SR550 is likely to be of particular interest.
Along with a completely revamped hardware design, a big part of the appeal is Lenovo’s latest XClarity server management system. As soon as we powered it on, the SR550 presented us with the new XClarity Controller (XCC) interface on its dedicated management port.
The XClarity Provisioning Manager handles OS deployment with aplomb. We selected its assisted installation mode during boot up and it duly guided us through the process of setting up a RAID array and installing Windows Server 2016; in under 30 minutes we were ready to go.
The XCC remote web interface also presents a slick home page offering a wealth of information about system health and critical components. It provides quick access to remote control, and shows coloured graphs showing resource utilisation and system-wide power usage.
Alongside hardware inventory, you also get a complete breakdown of fan and voltage status, plus internal temperatures. RAID controllers can be directly configured from the XCC interface, and you can also update the firmware and manage access security.
We set up Lenovo’s XClarity Administrator 1.4 in our lab inside a Hyper-V instance; after adding the SR550 to its console, we were immediately able to remotely monitor it, use its email alerting services and employ its image library for firmware updates and OS deployments. We were also able to use Lenovo’s free XClarity Mobile iOS app on our iPad to remotely access the Administrator host and monitor our server on the go.
The hardware is solidly constructed, and quite flexibly designed, with support for 12 LFF or 16 SFF drives. Our review system was supplied with eight LFF drive bays plus the operator panel, and the price also includes two 1TB “simple-swap” (that is, cold-swap) SATA hard disks.
The embedded Intel RSTe controller supports up to eight SATA drives in striped, mirrored and RAID5 arrays; if that’s not enough then Lenovo offers an optional RAID 530-8i adapter which introduces SAS3 support. The 930-8i and 930-16i expand things further with RAID6 and 2GB of cache memory.
Our review system came with an entry-level six-core 1.7GHz Xeon Bronze 3104. You can, however, use any Xeon Scalable processor with a maximum TDP of 125W and up to 20 physical cores – which includes all
“The XClarity Provisioning Manager guided us through the process of setting up a RAID array and installing Windows Server 2016”
Bronze or Silver models, plus a wide range of Gold CPUs. There’s a second socket too, if you need to boost your parallel processing power.
The price includes 16GB of TruDDR4 RAM; with both CPU sockets occupied, you can use the 12 DIMM slots to install a maximum of 384GB of RDIMM or 768GB of LRDIMM memory.
It’s all powered by a single 750W Platinum PSU, but you can configure a second for hotplug redundancy. Lenovo also offers 550W Platinum and 750W Titanium PSUs, which should be plenty for most people’s needs. With its Bronze CPU, our test server drew a tiny 57W idle, and even under extreme load its power consumption peaked at a mere 70W.
The base system has only a single PCI Express slot, but two optional risers increase the slot count to six. Dual Gigabit Ethernet is built in, along with a dedicated XCC port, and you can use Lenovo’s LOM adapters to add dual GbE, dual 10GbE copper or SFP+ fibre ports.
The ThinkSystem SR550 is an affordable entry point into the world of Xeon Scalable processing. Its flexible design allows you to start small and easily expand as your needs grow, and Lenovo’s latest server management features are among the best in the business.
SPECIFICATIONS 2U rack chassis 1.7GHz Xeon Bronze 3104 (max 2) 16GB 2,667MHz TruDDR4 (max 768GB with LRDIMMs) Intel C622 Intel RSTe; supports RAID0, 1, 5, 10 2 x 1TB SATA simple-swap drives (max 12 LFF/16 SFF) 1x PCI-E 3.0 (max 6) 2 x Gigabit Ethernet XCC Enterprise with GbE 750W hotplug PSU (max 2) 3yr on-site NBD warranty Power: 57W idle, 70W peak