While blade servers are the dominant deployment of UCS solutions, Cisco has strategically extended its offering to include the industry-standard rack-mount form factor as well to provide users a choice against competing rack-mount server vendors such as HP, IBM, and Dell. Blade servers are categorized as B-Series servers, and rack-mount servers are categorized as C-Series servers.
Blade servers are at the heart of the UCS solution and come in various system resource configurations in terms of CPU, memory, and hard disk capacity. All blade servers are based on Intel® Xeon® processors, and there is no AMD option available. Businesses can choose from different blade configurations as required.
The B200 series is a half-width blade server and is in the third-generation of UCS hardware. The B200 M4 supports the latest Intel® Xeon® E5 v3 or v4 processor family, while B200 M3 supports the Intel® Xeon® E5-2500 or E5-2600 v1 or v2 processor family.
The specifications of the latest B200 M3/M4 server are as follows:
- Two Intel® Xeon® E5-2600 v3 or v4 processor family CPUs for B200 M4 and Intel® Xeon® E5-2500 or E5-2600 v2 processor family CPUs for B200 M3.
- A maximum of 1.5 TB total memory capacity (using 64 GB DIMMs). Total memory slots are 24.
- Two drive bays for SAS/SATA/SSD internal hard drives for up to 2 TB maximum storage capacity with built-in RAID 0 and 1 controller
- Up to 80 GB I/O throughput with supported mezzanine card
A B200 series entry-level blade server is the most deployed blade server and is an excellent choice for virtualization, web server farms, distributed databases, and CRM applications.
The B260 M4 series server is a full-width blade server with the power of Intel® Xeon® E7 series processor family CPUs.
These are its specifications:
- Two Intel® Xeon® E7 v2, v3, or v4 processor family CPUs
- A maximum of 3 TB total memory capacity with total 48 memory slots
- Two drives bays for SAS/SATA/SSD internal hard drives
- Up to 160 GB I/O throughput with supported mezzanine card
The B260 series server is an excellent choice for mission-critical and distributed workload with its latest addition of Intel® Xeon® E7 processors.
The B420 M3/M4 series server is a full-width blade server. The B420 M3/M4 series is based on an Intel® Xeon® E5 series processor.
The following are the specifications of the B420 M3/M4 servers:
- Four Intel® Xeon® E5-4600 v3 or v4 for the B420 M4 and v2 for B420 M3
- A maximum of 3 TB total memory capacity with total 48 memory slots
- Two drive bays for SAS/SATA/SSD internal hard drives with an optional 2 GB flash-backed write cache
- Up to 160 GB I/O throughput with supported mezzanine card
B420 M3/M4 is full width blade server and can be best fit for enterprise performance and scalable architecture such as VDI, ERP and CRM applications.
The B460 M4 series server is a dual full-width blade server and combine the power of two B260 M4 servers with four sockets.
These are its specifications:
- Four Intel® Xeon® E7 v2, E7 v3, or E7 v4 processor family CPUs
- A maximum of 6 TB total memory capacity with total 96 memory slots
- Four drives bays for SAS/SATA/SSD internal hard drives
- Up to 320 GB I/O throughput with supported mezzanine card
Note
The B460 M4 server is most in demand double full-width blade server for mission critical applications, in-memory analytics and large scale database applications so on. For a quick comparison of B-Series blade servers, visit http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10280/prod_models_comparison.html. Select all servers and press the Compare button. Cisco UCS B22 M3, B200 M1/M2, B230 M1/M2, B250 M1/M2, and B440 M1/M2 servers have reached end of sale and are no longer being sold.
UCS C-Series servers are available in industry-standard rack-mount form factor. Like B-Series blade servers, these servers are also based on Intel® Xeon® processors and there is no AMD option available.
C-Series servers can be managed independently through out of band (OOB) web management interface or can be integrated to UCSM software. The embedded controller known as CIMC provides the following services:
- Remote KVM to server console
- Remote power management
- Remote virtual media for operating system installation
- Industry standard IPMI support for monitoring
- Standard SNMP traps for monitoring
Connecting and managing C-Series rack servers through UCSM requires connection through Nexus 2300/2200 series Fabric Extenders which acts as line card to the Fabric Interconnects.
C-Series servers are available in various CPU, memory, I/Om, and storage configurations to address needs of different size of organizations. Following are the specifications of these servers as available at the Cisco website.
C220 M3/M4 is a 1U form factor rack-mounted server. C220 M4 supports the latest Intel® Xeon® E5 v3 or v4 processor family while C220 M3 supports Intel® Xeon® E5-2500 or E5-2600 v2 processor family.
Specifications of the C220 M3/M4 server:
- Two Intel® Xeon® processors E5-2600 v3 or v4 product family CPUs
- Maximum of 1.5 TB total memory capacity with total 24 memory slots in M4 while 512 GB total memory capacity with total 16 memory slots in M3
- Up to eight small form factor (SFF) or four large form factor (LFF) internal storage SAS/SATA/SSD hard disks with 12.8 TB (SFF) or 16 TB (LFF) storage capacity and optional RAID controller
- 2 x 1 GB I/O ports with optional 10 GB unified fabric
- Two PCIe generation three expansion slots
C220 M3/M4 series server has great performance and density for distributed database applications and web farms.
C240 M3/M4 is 2U formed factor rack-mounted server. C240 M4 supports latest Intel® Xeon® E5 v3 processor family while C240 M3 supports Intel® Xeon® E5-2600 v2 processor family.
Specifications of the C240 M3/M4 server:
- Two Intel® Xeon® processors E5-2600 v3 product family CPUs
- Maximum of 1.5 TB total memory capacity with total 24 memory slots in M4 while 768 GB total memory capacity with total 24 memory slots in M3
- Up to 26 SFF or 12 LFF internal storage SAS/SATA/SSD hard disks with 38.4 TB (SFF) or 48 TB (LFF) storage capacity and optional RAID controller
- 2 x 1 GB I/O ports with one modular LOM
- Up to six PCIe generation three expansion slots
C240 M3/M4 series server provides great performance with storage extensibility for distributed database application and web farms.
C460 M2/M4 is 4U formed factor rack-mounted server. C460 M4 supports latest Intel® Xeon® E7-4800/8800 v2 or v3 processor family while B460 M2 supports Intel® Xeon® E7-4800/8800 v1 processor family.
Specifications of the C460 M2/M4 servers are as follows:
- Four Intel® Xeon® E7-4800/8800 v2 or v3 processor product family CPUs
- Maximum of 6 TB total memory capacity with total 96 memory slots
- Up to 12 LFF internal storage SAS/SATA/SSD hard disks with 21.6 TB (LFF) storage capacity and no RAID controller
- Two GE LAN on motherboard I/O ports with optional two 10 GB unified fabric ports
- 10 PCIe generation three expansion slots with optional LSI MegaRAID controller in the eleventh slot
The C460 M2/M4 series server provides exceptional computational resources for business critical applications, such as large databases both in bare metal and virtualized environments.
Note
For quick comparison of C-Series servers, please visit http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10493/prod_models_comparison.html. Select all servers and press Compare button. Cisco UCS C22 M3, C24 M3, C200 M1/M2, C210 M1, C250 M1/M2, C260 M2, C420 M3, and B460 M1 servers have reached end of sale.