The Power 740 Express is a one- or two-socket server that supports up to 16 POWER7 cores in a flexible 4U rack-optimised form factor. The Power 740 offers large memory capacity, outstanding performance of the POWER7 processor, PowerVM and workload-optimising capabilities to enable companies to get the most out of their systems by increasing utilisation and performance while helping to reduce infrastructure and energy costs. The new Power 740 Express Model 8205-E6C adds increased memory capacity and additional high bandwidth Generation 2 PCI-Express slots to provide even greater performance capabilities.

Overview

Highlights

  • For small-to-midsize database servers
  • For consolidation of UNIX, IBM i and x86 Linux workloads and virtualized application servers

Everyone knows what “performance” meant for IT in the past. Built on the foundation of POWER7® processor technology, our Power Systems Express servers continue to excel and extend industry leadership in the traditional benchmarks of performance.

But, today, the IT landscape is evolving rapidly. And, as processes become more interrelated and complex, IT is being called upon to solve challenging new problems—and implement new IT projects, delivering them with both higher service levels and in a more cost effective manner.

The emerging measures of IT performance today are around agility and the ability to help the business capitalize on new opportunities. IT is measured on providing an infrastructure that can handle rapid growth and manage business risk while meeting higher required service levels. And of course it is expected that new services will be delivered with tighter budget constraints—with IT expected to do more with less and find the lowest cost solutions possible.

Businesses desire systems that deliver outstanding performance but also demand that those systems achieve higher levels of energy efficiency and utilization to help conserve energy and reduce infrastructure costs. As a small-to-midsize database server, the Power® 740 Express® server is fueled by the outstanding performance of the POWER7® processor, making it possible for applications to run faster with fewer processors, which can result in lower per core software licensing costs. The Power 740 Express also supports innovative workload-optimizing and energy management technologies to help clients get the most out of their systems; that is, running applications quickly and energy efficiently to reduce costs.

As a consolidation server, businesses can further reduce costs and energy consumption by combining the Power 740 Express performance, capacity and configuration flexibility with industrial-strength PowerVM™ virtualization for AIX®, IBM i, and Linux. The Power 740 Express is designed with large memory and I/O capacity to satisfy even the most demanding processing environments and can deliver business advantages and higher client satisfaction.

 

Feature Benefits
Leadership POWER7 performance
  • Access data faster and improve response time
  • Do more work with fewer servers and benefit from infrastructure cost savings from a reduction in the number of servers and software licenses
Intelligent Threads
  • Optimize performance by selecting the suitable threading mode for your application
Active Memory Expansion
  • Enables more work to be done with existing server resources
PowerVM Virtualization
  • Easily add workloads as your business grows
  • Utilize the full capability of the system to reduce infrastructure costs by consolidating workloads running the AIX, IBM i or Linux operating
  • Provides ability to handle unexpected workload peaks by sharing resources
RAS Features
  • Keep applications up and running so you can focus on growing your business
Light Path Diagnostics
  • Easily and quickly diagnose hardware problems reducing service time.
Flexibility and choice of AIX, IBM i and Linux operating systems
  • Choose the operating environment that best suits your application and business needs
IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager™ with EnergyScale Technology
  • Dramatically and dynamically improve energy efficiency and lower energy costs with innovative energy management capabilities
  • Enables businesses to continue operations when energy is limited

 

Specification
Configuration options
POWER7 processor modules—one or two per system 4-core or 8-core 3.3 GHz or
4-core or 8-core 3.7 GHz or
6-core or 12-core 3.7 GHz or
8-core or 16-core 3.55 GHz
Sockets 1 or 2
Level 2 (L2) cache 256 KB per core
Level 3 (L3) cache 4 MB per core
Memory 8 GB to 512 GB1 of RDIMM DDR3
Active Memory Expansion
Solid-state Drives (SSD) Up to eight SFF drives
Disk drives Up to eight SFF SAS drives
Disk capacity Up to 4.8 TB
Media bays Slimline for DVD-RAM
Half height for tape drive or removable disk
I/O Model 8205-E6B Model 8205-E6C
PCI Adapter slots Four PCI Express 8x plus optional four PCI Express Generation2 Low Profile Five PCI Express 8x Generation2 plus optional four PCI Express Generation2 low profile
Standard Ethernet Four virtual Ethernet 10/100/1000 Mbps ports (or)
Two virtual 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports		 Two Ethernet 10/100/1000 Mbps ports
Integrated SAS controller One controller for SAS DASD/SSD and DVD-RAM
Optional protected 175 MB cache with RAID 5, 6		 One controller for SAS DASD/SSD with RAID 10, and DVD-RAM
Optional protected 175 MB cache with RAID 5, 6
High-performance PCI adapters (optional) 8 Gigabit Fibre Channel
10 Gigabit Ethernet
10 Gigabit Fibre Channel over Ethernet
Dual-port Quad Data Rate IB		 4-port 8 Gigabit Fibre Channel
10 Gigabit Ethernet
10 Gigabit Fibre Channel over Ethernet
Dual Port Quad Data Rate IB
Other integrated ports Three USB, two HMC, two system ports, two SPCN
GX slots (12X) Two GX 2
I/O expansion (optional) Up to 4 PCIe 12X I/O drawers – 40 PCIe slots
Up to 8 PCI-X DDR 12X I/O drawers – 48 PCIx slots
Up to 416 SFF bays
Other PCI adapters supported include SAS, SCSI, WAN/Async, USB, Crypto, iSCSI
PowerVM technologies
POWER Hypervisor™ LPAR, Dynamic LPAR, Virtual LAN (Memory-to-memory interpartition communication)
PowerVM Express Edition (optional) Up to three partitions on the server; virtualized disk and optical devices (VIOS); Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM); Shared Dedicated Capacity
PowerVM Standard Edition (optional) PowerVM Express Edition plus Micro-Partitioning™ with up to 10 micropartitions per processor; Multiple Shared Processor Pools
PowerVM Enterprise Edition (optional) PowerVM Standard Edition plus Live Partition Mobility (LPM) and Active Memory Sharing (AMS)
RAS features ECC memory with Chipkill
Processor Instruction Retry
Alternate Processor Recovery
Service processor with fault monitoring
Hot-plug disk bays
Hot-plug and redundant power supplies and cooling fans
Dynamic component Deallocation
Operating systems3 AIX
IBM i
Linux for POWER®
High availability IBM PowerHA™ family
Power requirements 200 V to 240 V ac, single phase
System dimensions Rack Drawer: 6.9 in. H × 17.3 in. W × 24.0 in. D (173 mm × 440 mm × 610 mm); weight: 87 lbs (39.5 kg)4
Warranty (limited) 3 year Limited Warranty, on site for selected components; CRU (customer-replaceable unit) for all other units (varies by country), Next Business Day 9x5 (excluding holidays), warranty service upgrades and maintenance are available

1 256 GB maximum memory for Power 740 Model 8205-E6B
2 Each shares space with and replaces one PCI Express 8x slot. Available configuration options are dependent on the number of processor cores and other factors. Contact IBM or your IBM Business Partner for specific configuration restrictions.
3 See facts and features document for detailed OS level support.
4 Weight will vary when disks, adapters and peripherals are added.