Fujitsu Server Primergy RX2530 M2 review

The management controller can keep tabs on power consumption for up to five years

Server design and power

Internally, the RX2530 M2 is nicely designed with the CPUs fitted with solid passive heatsinks and surrounded by 24 easily accessible DIMM slots. Maximum memory is currently 1.5TB but those that can afford the latest 128GB LR-DIMMs can push this to an app-busting 3TB.

Cooling is handled well as the server has eight dual-rotor, hot-plug fans spread across the chassis in front on the motherboard. Entry-level models have a single 450W Platinum hot-plug PSU which can be upgraded to two for redundancy and other options are 800W Platinum and Titanium PSUs for higher specified servers.

Power consumption is low and we measured the review system pulling a modest 96W in idle and peaking at only 212W under maximum load from SiSoft Sandra. Fujitsu's improved energy efficiency clearly works well as an RX2450 M1 rack server and its pair of 14-core 2.3GHz E5-2695 v3 Xeons returned much higher power draws of 107W and 360W.

Fujitsu's Cool-Safe technology improves airflow and the Advanced Thermal Design (ADT) option allows the server to run in ambient temperatures of between 40 and 45 degrees C. There are no hardware restrictions for using ATD at 40 degrees C while systems that support 45 degrees C are not permitted to use PRAID cards fitted the flash battery backup module.

Fujitsu's DynamicLOM network cards avoid using a PCI-Express slot as they snap into a proprietary connector on the motherboard. Our system came with a quad Gigabit card and Fujitsu also offers dual Gigabit and dual 10GbE RJ45 or SFP+ versions.

There are a lot of cooling fans and Fujitsu's ServerView can keep an eye on them all

Conclusion

The Primergy RX2530 M2 packs a lot into its compact dimensions and has the power to handle a wide range of duties including HPC, scale-out, databases and virtualization. The ServerView management software desperately needs updating but other than that, this 1U rack server represents a solid investment offering good storage permutations and plenty of room for future upgrades.

Verdict

A versatile 1U rack server with good expansion potential, plenty of power for a wide range of enterprise tasks and all delivered at a tempting price

Chassis: 1U rack CPU: 2 x 2.2GHz Xeon E5-2630 v4 Memory: 32GB DDR4 (max 1.5TB) Storage: 2 x 300GB HGST 15K SAS SFF (max 10) RAID: Fujitsu PRAID CP400i 12Gbps SAS Array support: RAID0, 1, 1E, 10, 5, 50 Network: 4 x Gigabit DynamicLOM card Expansion: 4 x PCI-e 3.0 (3 free) Power: 2 x 450W hot-plug PSUs Management: Fujitsu iRMC S4 Advanced with Gigabit Warranty: 3 years on-site NBD