Cisco C240 M6 LFF CTO Rack Server
12 Front LFF + 4 Mid LFF + 4 Rear SSD's
The Cisco UCS C240 M6 Rack Server is a 2-socket, 2-Rack-Unit (2RU) rack server offering industry-leading performance and expandability. It supports a wide range of storage and I/O-intensive infrastructure workloads, from big data and analytics to collaboration. Cisco UCS C-Series M6 Rack Servers can be deployed as standalone servers or as part of a Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS) managed environment, and now with Cisco Intersight is able to take advantage of Cisco’s standards-based unified computing innovations that help reduce customers’ Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and increase their business agility.
CISCO M6 C240 Base Knowledge
This Rack Server comes in two Chassis Form Factors. The SFF and the LFF Chassis. Both can accommodate a certain number of NVMe drives with a mixture of other SAS and SATA drives. We are going to focus on the LFF version in this CTO.
The LFF server (UCSC-C240-M6L) accommodates up to 12 front-facing SAS-only LFF drives, up to 4 mid-plane SAS-only LFF drives, and up to 4 rear-facing SFF drives (SAS or SATA or NVMe).
The server is equipped with two rear storage PCIe risers that hold 2 SSD. Riser 1A has 2 drive slots and a 3rd PCIe slot dedicated for the Storage controller while Riser 3A is just 2 SSD drives. There is also the Riser 2A which has 3 PCIe slots. More on these below in the expansion section.
Features:
- Supports 2 third-generation Intel Xeon Scalable CPU, with up to 40 cores per socket
- Up to 32 DDR4 DIMMs for improved performance, including higher density DDR4 DIMMs (16 DIMMs per socket)
- 16x DDR4 DIMMs + 16x Intel Optane persistent memory modules for up to 12 TB of memory
- Up to 8 PCIe Gen 4.0 expansion slots plus a modular LAN-on-motherboard (mLOM) slot
- Support for Cisco UCS VIC 1400 Series adapters as well as third-party options
- Up to 28 hot-swappable Small-Form-Factor (SFF) SAS/SATA or NVMe:
- 28 SFF SAS/SATA (with up to 8x NVMe)
- 26 NVMe in all NVMe SKU (SN) at PCIe Gen 4 x4 (2:1 oversubscribed)
- 14 NVMe in all NVMe SKU (N)
- 16 LFF drives with options 4 rear SFF (SAS/SATA/NVMe) disk drives
- Support for a 12-Gbps SAS modular RAID controller in a dedicated slot, leaving the remaining PCIe Gen 4.0 expansion slots available for other expansion cards
- 2 boot options
- Up to 960 GB with optional hardware RAID
- Up to five GPUs supported
- Modular LAN-on-motherboard (mLOM) slot that can be used to install a Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card (VIC) without consuming a PCIe slot, supporting quad port 10/40 Gbps or dual port 40/100 Gbps network connectivity
- Dual embedded Intel x550 10GBASE-T LAN-on-motherboard (LOM) ports
- Modular M.2 SATA SSDs for boot with HW Raid support
- Rack options Cisco ball-bearing rail kit with optional reversible cable management arm
High performance for data-intensive applications
The Cisco UCS C240 M6 Rack Server is well-suited for a wide range of enterprise workloads, including:
- Big data and analytics
- Collaboration
- Small and medium-sized business databases
- Virtualization and consolidation
- Storage servers
- High-performance appliances
Memory
32 DDR4 DIMM slots: 16, 32, 64, 128 and 256 GB up to 3200 MHz Support for the Intel Optane DC persistent memory (128G, 256G, 512G). DIMM mixing is not allowed when PMem are installed; in these cases, all DIMMs must be the same type and size.
Max Memory:
- 4 TB: 32 x 128 GB DDR4 DIMMs
- 10 TB: 16 x 128 GB DDR4 DIMMs and 16 x 512 GB Intel® Optane™ Persistent Memory Modules (PMem).
The available memory main characteristics for the C240 M6 LFF are as follows:
- Clock speed: 3200 MHz
- Ranks per DIMM: 1, 2, 4, or 8
- Operational voltage: 1.2 V
- Registered ECC DDR4 DIMMS (RDIMMs), Load-reduced DIMMs (LRDIMMs), or Intel® Optane™ Persistent Memory Modules (PMem).
Drive Options
- UCSC-C240-M6SX | Up to 28 x 2.5-inch SAS and SATA HDDs and SSDs (up to 4 NVMe PCIe drives)
- UCSC-C240-M6SN | Up to 26 x 2.5-inch NVMe PCIe SSDs (All direct attach Gen4 x4)
- UCSC-C240-M6L | Up to 16 x 3.5-inch SAS and SATA HDDs and SSDs and optional 2 rear 2.5-inch HDDs and SSDs (up to 4 NVMe PCIe drives)
UCSC-C240-M6L | The 12-drive Cisco UCS C240 M6 LFF Rack Server. This server supports 12 3.5-inch (LFF) SAS-only front drives, four 3.5-inch SAS-only drives in the midplane drive cage, and two or four 2.5-inch (SFF) NVME/SAS/SATA rear drives in risers.
The following list summarizes how drives are controlled on the server:
- SAS/SATA drives are controlled through a Cisco 12G RAID Controller, or
- SAS/SATA drives are controlled through a Cisco 12G SAS pass-through HBA
- PCIe NVMe drives are controlled directly from the CPUs
Other Drive Rules:
- You can mix HDDs and SSDs as long as you keep all HDDs in their own RAID volume and all SSDs in their own RAID volume.
- You can mix SAS HDDs and SAS/SATA SSDs when using the Cisco 12G SAS RAID controller or Cisco 12G SAS HBA.
- If you order any SFF NVMe rear drives, you must also order two CPUs.
- SED drives can be mixed with non-SED drives
- 5-inch SFF NVMe drives are connected directly to the CPU, and are not managed by the RAID controller or SAS HBA.
- A midplane kit (PID UCSC-MPSTOM6L-KIT) is required
Expansion Slots
Only risers 1B, 2A, and 3B are supported.
8 PCIe 4.0 slots, 1 dedicated 12-Gbps RAID controller slot and 1 dedicated mLOM slot. With 8PCIe slots the system is able to support up to 5 A10 Single Wide GPUs. Slots 4, 5, and 6 on riser card 2A accommodate single-wide GPUs.
The C240 M6 LFF server includes a dedicated modular LAN on motherboard (mLOM) slot for installation of a Cisco Virtual Interface Card (VIC) or third-party network interface card (NIC) without consuming a PCI slot, in addition to 2x 10Gbase-T embedded (on the motherboard) LOM ports.
The standard option card offerings are:
- Modular LAN on Motherboard (mLOM)
- Virtual Interface Cards (VIC)
- Network Interface Cards (NICs)
- Host Bus Adapters (HBAs)
Riser 2 and 3 connect to CPU 2 and if they are not installed then you will need to add the Riser Filler Blanks for optimal air flow.
- Riser 2 Blank UCSC-FBRS2-C240M6
- Riser 3 Blank UCSC-FBRS3-C240M6
| Product ID (PID) |
Description |
|
PCIe Riser 1B (controlled with CPU1) |
|
UCSC-RIS1B-240M6 | - Slot 1 is reserved for a drive controller
- Supports two drives: slot 2 (drive bay 102) and slot 3 (drive bay 101):
- When using a hardware RAID controller card in the server,
SAS/SATA/NVMe 2.5” universal drives are supported in the rear bays.
|
|
PCIe Riser 2A (controlled with CPU2) |
|
UCSC-RIS2A-240M6 | Supports three PCIe slots: - Slot 4 is full-height, 3/4 length, x8
- Slot 5 is full-height, full-length, x16
- Slot 6 is full-height, full length, x8
|
|
PCIe Riser 3B (controlled with CPU2) |
|
UCSC-RIS3B-240M6 | Supports three PCIe slots: - Two 2.5” drives, both x4
- Slot 7 (drive bay 104)
- Slot 8 (drive bay 103)
|
Power & Fan Units
The chassis is equipped with six fans and two power supplies. In a server with two power supplies, both power supplies must be identical. Hot-pluggable, redundant 1050W AC, 1050W DC, 1600W AC, and 2300W AC
Dimensions & Weight:
Height 3.42 in. (8.7 cm)
Width (Not including slam latches) 16.9 in.(42.9 cm)
Width (including slam latches) 18.9 in.(48.0 cm)
Depth 30 in. (76.2 cm)
Weight with the following options and no rail kit:
- 0 HDD, 0 CPU, 0 DIMM, and 1 2400 W power supply 39.13 lbs (17.8 kg)
- 0 HDD, 0 CPU, 0 DIMM, and 1 2400 W power supply 47.44 lbs (21.5 kg)
- 1 HDD, 1 CPU, 1 DIMM, and 1 2400 W power supply 41.95 lbs (19 kg)
- 1 HDD, 1 CPU, 1 DIMM, and 1 2400 W power supply 50.26 lbs (22.8 kg)
- 12 HDDs, 2 CPUs, 32 DIMMs, and 2 2400 W power supplies 61.7 lbs (28 kg)
- 12 HDDs, 2 CPUs, 32 DIMMs, and 2 2400 W power supplies 66.75 lbs (30.3 kg)
