Storage Servers

Aberdeen Stirling X31 Storage Server Highlights

Aberdeen's newest line of Storage servers have many advantages over our previous line. Common features include: (a) PCIE 3.0 for twice the available expansion slot bandwidth. (b) IPMI with dedicated LAN port and KVM over LAN for remote server management. (c) High-efficiency redundant power supplies. (d) Hardware RAID with BBU. (e) JBOD expansion without adding an additional controller. (f) The convenience of tool-less mounting rails.

The Stirling X31 is a 3U storage server that features 16 hot-swap hard drive bays for data storage and 2 additional rear bays for the OS drives. The X31 is part of the first generation of Aberdeen Stirling X Storage servers to feature Intel E5 2600 Series Xeon processors based on exciting new Sandy Bridge architecture. With support for up to 512GB of DDR3 memory, dual 10GbE LAN ports and six free PCI Express 3.0 expansion slots, the X31 has the ability to support the maximum amount of full size expansion cards while still offering a relatively small 3U form factor.

The record-breaking Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 product family deliver leadership performance, best data center performance per watt and breakthrough I/O innovation and trusted hardware security features to enable IT to scale.

Leadership Performance with Best Data Center Performance Per Watt

Supporting up to eight cores per processor and up to 768GB of system memory, the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family increases performance by up to 80 percent compared to the previous generation Intel Xeon processor 5600 series.

• Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions (Intel® AVX): These instructions increase floating point operations per clock up to two times for technical, financial, scientific and content creation applications. They double the size of the register used to process the instruction up to 256 bits allowing the CPU to do more work every clock cycle.
• Intel® Turbo Boost Technology 2.0: This technology allows the processor to increase frequency at the request of the operating system (OS) to handle workload spikes as well as shift power across the processor. For example, if one core is doing all the work while another is idle, the processor could "turbo up" by redirecting power from the idle core to the active one.

I/O Innovation and Network Capabilities

With the unprecedented growth in data traffic, it is essential that systems not only improve computational abilities, but also enable data to flow faster to support data-hungry applications and increase the bandwidth within the data center.

• Intel® Integrated I/O (Intel® IIO): Intel IIO moves the I/O controller from a separate chip on the motherboard directly onto the processor die while also supporting the latest generation PCI Express 3.0 standard and Intel® Data Direct I/O. This can reduce I/O latency up to 30 percent over previous architectures and supports the PCIe 3.0 specification which improves I/O bandwidth by up to 2x.
• Intel® Data Direct I/O (Intel® DDIO): This technology allows Intel® Ethernet controllers and other adapters to route I/O traffic directly to the processor cache. This process reduces trips to system memory to further lower power use and I/O latency.

Trusted Security

The Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 product family reaffirms Intel's commitment to providing a secure hardware foundation for today's data centers.

• Intel® Advanced Encryption Standard – New Instructions (Intel® AES-NI):These microprocessor instructions can dramatically reduce the processing overhead associated with encryption/decryption so IT can broadly encrypt all business critical data on their devices and over the network. Where AES is used, Intel AES-NI can make it faster and stronger. AES can be used to protect data during transmission and storage, and to protect data in enterprise applications.
• Intel® Trusted Execution Technology (Intel® TXT): Intel TXT is a technology for establishing more trusted platforms. It uses processor, chipset and BIOS enhancements to measure the components of a launch environment to enforce that only "known good" configurations are launched and allow these configurations to be reported. This helps protect against a number of software-based attacks and enhances the ability to meet audit and compliance activities with greater visibility and control for virtualized and cloud environments.