Supermicro BigTwin SuperServer 220BT-HNC8R

Description

Perfect for datacenters and cloud, the Supermicro BigTwin SuperServer 220BT-HNC8R offers high-density with 4x server nodes, each of which has two 3rd generation Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs. Each server node has 6x on the front drive bays which offer support for SAS, SATA and NVMe storage devices. Each of the server nodes can be outfitted to support a different workload and depending on your choice of memory modules can support up to 6TB of memory using Intel Optane persistent memory 200 series, AKA PMem. This system features a shared cooling design, but also has optional liquid cooling support. Power is provided by shared dual redundant 2600W Titanium level PSUs.

*This system is only sold as a completely assembled system with a minimum requirement per server node of 2x CPUS, 2x DIMMs, and 1x NIC. For optimal performance, 16x DIMMs are recommended per node.

Performance

The 3rd generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors supported on this system are limited to 36 cores and 72 virtual threads, but still deliver more and faster memory plus PCIe 4.0 slots.
PCIe 4.0 offers twice the bandwidth compared to PCIe 3.0 for support of more NVMe storage devices and support for faster hardware components in general. 3rd generation SP processors also occupy a slightly larger socket, the P+ (LGA 4189). This system is also future-ready to support the next 4th generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors using the same P+ socket design. Installing 1x DIMM per channel (DPC) provides the best memory performance and speed at up to 3200MHz, 2x DPC will only support memory speeds of up to 2933MHz.

Memory

Each 3rd generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor (SP) also supports 8x memory channels compared to only 6x memory channels on the previous generation SP processors. This provides for a significant increase in memory and memory speeds of up to 3200MHz are supported. With 10x memory module slots per processor, 8x are for support of registered (RDIMM) memory modules while the other 2x are specifically for PMem modules. Double that to 16x DRAM and 4x PMem modules with both processors installed, per server node. Using a combination of DRAM and PMem the system is capable of supporting up to 6TB of memory or if just DRAM is used, capacity is 4TB of memory.

Storage

There are 24x storage bays up front that support SAS, SATA, or NVMe drives. You can also install 2x NVMe or SATA 3 M.2 drives, in each server node to support the OS and preserve your upfront storage. 6x of the front storage drives are allocated to each of the server nodes. The system features built-in SAS3 support via a Broadcom 3808 controller. Virtual RAID on CPU (vROC) is also an option offering limited RAID options for SSD storage devices.

Expansion

Expansion slots on the back of each server node provide more functionality with support from more and faster I/O options. Both Slots 1 and 2 support a PCIe 4.0 x16 LP socket, plus a x8 slot for an M.2 drive carrier with 2x M.2 drives. The SAS controller also has a dedicated slot on the side of the memory modules. An advanced I/O module (AIOM) provides a network connection with several options for both network connection speeds and the number of ports supported.

Management

Using Supermicro’s out-of-band license enables remote access of the system. There are several other utilities providing more control and automation over the supermicro 220BT-HNC8R server and enabling administrators to focus on the business rather than management and maintenance issues. Applications include SuperCloud Composer, Supermicro Server Manager (SSM), Intel Node Manager, plus watchdog and SuperDoctor5 (SD5). Network access to the management features is through a dedicated RJ45 management port on the back of the system featuring KVM with a dedicated LAN.

Summary

The Supermicro BigTwin SuperServer 220BT-HNC8R is a high-density platform offering support for Intel’s latest 3rd and 4th generation Xeon Scalable processors. With 4x independent dual socket server nodes this platform can be used to support a number of key applications including Al-flash hyperconverged infrastructures, diskless high-performance computing (HPC) clusters, and container-as-a-service applications accelerator.