Rack server

Designed for performance

A rack server is supplied using rack U (1.75” or 44.45mm high) and are normally 1, 2 or 3U in height and are available with a range of high-performance processors from Intel or AMD.

Rack mount provide the most flexibility in a data centre as they can be repurposed for other applications and uses over the lifespan of the server.

Rack server Design

A Rack mount is normally mounted in a 42U 19” rack, smaller racks are available for businesses that have space constraints or require rack mounted servers that are mounted on rollers for portability or newer 70U 10ft tall racks that came out in 2016.

The most common Rack mount is 2U and this contains everything within the server including the CPU(s), memory, network connectivity, hard drives/SSD/NVMe, graphics, storage I/O and management.

A Rack mount normally has redundant fans and power supplies as well as hot swap drive bays. The network, graphics and storage controllers are normally mounted on a riser card that uses a PCIe slot.

Application use cases

As a rackmount chassis is a highly dense computer it is ideal for all the following applications:

Virtualisation - Powerful enough to run a virtual infrastructure to provide VM’s for applications or be used for VDI to deliver a virtual desktop environment

Clustering - Ideal for use with software applications such as Microsoft Cluster Server or VMware vSphere Cluster these applications require multiple servers to create high performance clusters.

Advantages of a Rack server

Below are some of the advantages of using a rack server:

Flexible - A rack server can house a multitude of interface cards to support external storage or high-speed networks such as 100GbE or 32Gbps Fibre Channel. It is this flexibility that makes them the No 1 choice for use in data centres.

Storage Capacity - Some Rack mount can now support 20+ drives within a single 2U chassis making them ideal for applications such as Object Storage or High Capacity NAS.

HPC and Ai - Rack servers are a great solution for running software that require multiple GPU, some of the Rack mount we provide can support 8x full length GPU cards in 2U!

Multiple Processor Support - Some 2U Rack mount can support up to 8 CPU processors along with support for 15TB memory!

Adaptable - With increased CPU processing, data storage, memory, GPU and network connectivity a Rack mount could replace dedicated storage arrays. An application that takes advantage of this is software defined storage.

One may use a rack server for:

  • Database servers
  • File servers
  • Mail servers
  • Print servers
  • Web servers
  • Game servers
  • Application servers

Limitations of using rack server

A rackmount chassis as mentioned does have many benefits over blade servers but there are some limitations as shown below:

  • Not as energy efficient as a blade server chassis
  • Takes up more rack space than a blade server chassis
  • Cabling can be an issue when using multiple servers in a rack
  • Is not as dense for compute and memory as a blade server

If you need some guidance in choosing a suitable Rack mount chassis for your requirement or application, we’re here to help.

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All Rack Server Products

Fujitsu PRIMERGY RX2530 M6

High capacity x86 dual socket server that supports the latest 3rd Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors with up to 40 cores per CPU, with performance improvements up to 40% better than the previous generation processors.

Get To Know Fujitsu PRIMERGY RX2530 M6
Fujitsu PRIMERGY RX2540 M6

High capacity x86 dual socket server that supports the latest 3rd Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors with up to 40 cores per CPU, with performance improvements up to 40% better than the previous generation processors.

Get To Know Fujitsu PRIMERGY RX2540 M6
Lenovo ThinkSystem SR645 Server

Dual-socket 1U rackmount server that supports the AMD EPYC 7003 “Milan” family of processors. Designed to tackle big data centre workloads such as databases, big data and analytics virtualization, VDI, HCI, HPC and AI solutions.

Get To Know Lenovo ThinkSystem SR645 Server
Lenovo ThinkSystem SR650 Server

Dual-socket 2U rackmount server that supports the Intel® Xeon® family of processors. Designed to tackle big data centre workloads such as databases, big data and analytics virtualization, VDI, HCI, HPC and AI solutions.

Get To Know Lenovo ThinkSystem SR650 Server
Lenovo ThinkSystem SR655 Server product

single-socket 2U rackmount server that supports the AMD EPYC 7002 “Rome” family of processors. Designed to tackle big data centre workloads such as analytics virtualization, VDI, OLTP, software defined storage.

Get To Know Lenovo ThinkSystem SR655 Server
Lenovo ThinkSystem SR665 Server product

Dual-socket 2U rackmount server that supports the AMD EPYC 7002 “Rome” family of processors. Designed to tackle big data centre workloads such as databases, big data and analytics virtualization, VDI, HCI, HPC and AI solutions.

Get To Know Lenovo ThinkSystem SR665 Server
Lenovo ThinkSystem SR670 Server product

Dual-socket 2U rackmount server that supports the Intel® Xeon® family of processors. With support for 4x double-width or 8x single-width high performance GPUs.

Get To Know Lenovo ThinkSystem SR670 Server
Lenovo ThinkSystem SR860 V2 Server product

Four-socket 4U rackmount server that supports the Intel® Xeon® family of processors, supporting up to 8 high performance GPUs. Designed to tackle Mission critical workloads such as SAP HANA in-memory computing, transactional databases, deep learning, analytics, big data, and virtual machine density.

Get To Know Lenovo ThinkSystem SR860 V2 Server

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