Lukas Beeler's IT Blog

A few days ago, i got hands on my first IBM System x3250. The x3250 isn’t a middle class server like the x3650, it’s IBMs low end rack server. You will see the difference on the pictures – there’s also a large pricing difference. This machine was to serve as a router/firewall/vpn concentrator, and thus doesn’t have any demands toward hardware. The OS installed was Debian GNU/Linux 3.1, which has it’s own set of problems.

The x3250 doesn’t have Light Path diagnostics, hot pluggable fans, or even hot pluggable hard disks. You can order them with 2.5″ HP SAS disks though, but that makes it a lot more expensive (to the point where an x3550 might be the better choice).

Here’s the configuration ordered:

• System x3250 Xeon 1.83Ghz DC, with 2×512MB Base Memory, 3.5″ Simple Swap SATA
• 2x 80GB SS-SATA

Unpacking and opening

This machine came packaged nicely into a big box, secured on a wooden pallet. It contained the usual low cost rack mount kit, without the facility the remove the machine halfway out of the rack, there was no cable tray, and no rails. It’s hard to see on the picture, because of the missing frame of reference, but the x3250 is very, very short. It would probably fit in a Telco Rack.

The disk blanks fit nicely (they have to – you don’t remove them, even if there are disks installed). Interestingly this machine still has PS/2 inputs, and the case is the same as the one of it’s predecessor, the xSeries 306m. Of course now with Intel Xeon DC. Even though a baseline model, you still have the ability to install an IBM RSA II card for remote maintenance. It also has a dedicated slot for installing a SAS/SATA raid controller, allowing you to do real hardware RAID without loosing a precious PCI-E slot.

Interiors

As you can see on the pictures, it’s clearly visible that this machine belongs to another price class than the x3650. While all cables are nicely tied together, and nothing is flying around, it’s still different from a middle class machine. The fans aren’t hot pluggable, neither are the disks. You can only install 4 DIMMs in total.

There’s an interesting heat pipe attached to the CPU, which i haven’t seen before – not even the x3650 has a heat pipe. Documentation however, is still top notch. The included documentation on the inside of the upper lid is is very detailed, and contains all the information you probably need.

Installing options

The cheapest x3250 has so called Simple Swap SATA disks. You can install and replace them while the server is mounted into the rack, but they aren’t hot pluggable. You don’t require any tools for this tasks, too. I think this was solved much better than HPs approach in their baseline machines – they use screws, and you will need to remove the machine from the rack.

Installing the SS-SATA disks is easy – just remove the filler pannel, and insert the disk till it clicks. Then place the filler panel pack into the server. Removing the disks is a breeze too, just pull on the blue latches attached to the disk.

Booting the server

The baseline x3250 doesn’t have a hardware RAID controller, just a standard Intel AHCI SATA controller, which is well supported on Linux. And by Linux, i mean “not Debian”. The current stable release of Debian doesn’t support AHCI SATA. This isn’t such a big problem, because you can install the OS using IDE emulation, build or install a newer kernel, and then switch the system to AHCI SATA mode.

However, this proved to be much more of a problem than i initially thought. Linux was able to recognize the disks, but after configuring the software RAID, the machine become really, really slow. Like 386 16Mhz slow. The RAID was rebuilding in the background, with about 2Mbytes per Minute. While this installing was very, very slowly skipping ahead, i built a proper kernel on another machine.

After the install finished, i quickly installed the new kernel, booting the machine in AHCI mode – thanks to Linux SW RAID autodection, there was no need to reconfigure anything. The RAID finished rebuilding with 50Mbyte/s, which i found much more acceptable – no slowdowns either.

Resumee

The x3250 is a cheap baseline model, and it’s visible. But i still think it trumps the alternative models from HP and Dell, while being similar in pricing.

Also, the obligatory plug to DATALINE AG which sells this server and other IBM System x or System i servers.