Fujitsu Primergy RX2540 M2 review
Fujitsu's RX2540 M2 is a powerful rack server with a tempting storage proposition
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Excellent value; Flexible storage upgrades; E5-2600 v4 Xeon power; Low power consumption
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Noisy cooling fans, Management software upgrade a few months away
Processing and power
Our review system included dual 2.2GHz E5-2650 v4 Xeons teamed up with 64GB of DDR4 memory. The motherboard has 24 DIMM slots with maximum memory currently at 1.5TB, although those with deep pockets can push this to 3TB using 128GB LRDIMMs.
The system on review includes a quartet of 300GB 15K SAS3 SFF drives and the PRAID EP420i controller. You can reduce costs by opting for the CP400i or EP400i SAS3 cards. These support RAID5 and 50 arrays with the latter including 1GB of cache memory.
Power choices are plentiful as our system has dual 450W hot-plug PSUs, while more powerful systems can avail themselves of 800W Platinum or Titanium PSUs or 1200W Platinum versions. Even with the fans running faster than we'd like, the server returned good readings in our power tests, consuming 119W in idle and peaking at 282W with the CPUs under a 100% load.
The server supports up to eight PCI-e cards using risers and there are also Fujitsu's DynamicLOM adapters. Snapping into a proprietary slot on the motherboard, versions are available with dual or quad Gigabit and dual fibre or copper 10-Gigabit.
Boot the system with the ServerView disk and it'll help you load an OS
Conclusion
With a list price of 5,000 for the review system, the Primergy RX2540 M2 looks very good value (street prices will almost certainly be lower). This includes a fine hardware package, making our review system ready for some serious app bashing straight out of the box.
It's a solid investment as the server can be specified to suit your budget and easily upgraded as required. Storage won't be as problem either, as the RX2540 M2 offers upgrade kits that cover most future business requirements.
Chassis: 2U rack CPU: 2 x 2.2GHz Xeon E5-2650 v4 Memory: 64GB DDR4 (max 1.5TB) Storage: 4 x 300GB HGST 15K SAS SFF (max 28) RAID: Fujitsu PRAID CP420i 12Gbps SAS/2GB cache Array support: RAID0, 1, 1E, 10, 5, 50, 6, 60 Network: 4 x Gigabit DynamicLOM card Expansion: 6 x PCI-e 3.0 (max 8 with risers) Power: 2 x 450W hot-plug PSUs Management: Fujitsu iRMC S4 Advanced with Gigabit Warranty: 3 years on-site NBD
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