ISC18: Inspur NF5486M5, 4U 106-Bay Storage Server at 1.25PB

At ISC18 (International Supercomputing Conference 2018), Inspur Electronic Information Industry Co.,Ltd launched the NF5486M5 server with high storage density.

Designed for large-scale datacenter users such as CSP and telecom operators, the server is for application scenarios of warm data and cold data, including video storage, archival storage and mail storage, as well as numerous application scenarios in big data and high-performance computing.

Storage density: 4U for 106 HDDs
The 4U server supports 106 3.5″ HDDs and has a storage capacity of 1.25PB. With a M.2 HDD as its OS, the server balances the storage capacity of warm data, cold data and system performance.

It supports an agile I/O, and comes with an I/O interface up to OCP standard, supporting 100Gb OCP NIC and PCIe 16X slot, and is compatible with 1/10/25/40/100Gb NICs.

With maintainability and energy efficiency, it is positioned for cloud data center deployment. It features modular design, with all modules supporting hot-swap and maintenance as the device remains in operation.

An integrated hardware/software management solution developed by the company’s engineers allows the administrator to identify faulted HDD and find out the cause on the admin interface. The faulted part can be taken out of the rack and repaired while the device remains in operation. NF5486M5 also adopts smart dynamic control technology for power supply and thermal dissipation. With an on/off control module configured for each HDD, the server adjusts real-time power according to the workload of each disk, effectively improving energy efficiency.

Structure and thermal dissipation design challenging physical limits
This product sets a record for storage devices with high storage density. Technologies including a partition reinforced structure, resonance suppression structure and high-precision airflow deployment technology solve problems of deformation, thermal dissipation and resonance.

The fully-configured NF5486M5 weighs up to 200kg. To meet the considerable challenge of controlling deformation within the maximum margin of error, along with high-strength structure technology, partition design has also been introduced to divide the whole chassis into HDD, controller, power, fan and other structural modules. Such design ensures lower risk of deformation for the fully-configured server than the standard of tolerance.

The energy dissipation density and component density of NF5486M5 are higher than those of ordinary servers. When the eight rows of HDDs are in operation, each row generates an additional 2°C of preheating on the rest of the HDDs, which means the last row of HDDs will operate at almost a critical temperature. To tackle this challenge, Inspur engineers employed precise airflow technology in each row and partitions to reduce preheating to less than 1°C, ensuring normal server operation.

When it’s working, the rotating HDDs create vibrations of the same frequency. When transmitted to the chassis, the vibration may easily cause disk resonance and device damage. The HDD bracket of NF5486M5 is made from different cushioning material combinations, which absorb disk vibrations and effectively avoids disk resonance.

Two ultimate scenario-based designs
The company’s generation M5 server adopts a scenario-based design principle in two aspects.

Chen Yanling, deputy GM, server product department, Inspur, noted that its physical design has been upgraded to continuously improve density, energy efficiency, manageability and maintainability in line with data center deployment conditions, which enormously lowers the total costs and technological complexity. At the same time, the problem of ‘100 applications running on one platform’ has also been solved, as the server optimizes computing, storage and I/O as well as extends space for different application scenarios, allowing different application systems to run on appropriate hardware platforms.

NF5288M5

The M5 server comes with an SR-AI rack system with the strong GPU scalability, the NF5288M5 with a high GPU density, i48 and various application servers for AI, big data and enterprise private cloud.

Meeting requirements of intelligent computing
Currently, civilian computing is evolving towards cloud computing and intelligent computing. Peng Zhen, VP, Inspur, noted that the changes of civilian computing call for changes in server products. Hyper-scale data centers are taking over traditional data centers, while application models such as AI are emerging, requiring server enterprises to shift to scenario-based design from traditional balanced design.

The company has seized the opportunity of intelligent computing development. Per Gartner’s 2018 Q1 report Inspur server shipments and sales ranked No.3 in the world and No.1 in China. In 11 of the past 17 quarters, Inspur has been the world’s fast-growing server provider. Inspur now aims to grow into the world’s largest server provider in 5 years.

According to Chen Yanling, the firm will further optimize its scenario-based design to better satisfy customers and serve global markets. Currently, the company has customers in 113 countries and regions, and has established eight global R&D centers, six global production centers and two global service centers.

The firm’s market share is growing in regions including the USA, China, Europe, South Korea and Japan.