The new Oracle X6-2 & X6-2L x86 Servers are shipping and they follow on from the X4 & X5 generations with 8, 12 & 24 disk chassis. Changes are the use of the  newer Intel Broadwell-EP Xeon E5-2600 v4 range (up to two 22-Core), slightly faster DDR4 memory and much of the rest is the same, 12Gb SAS disk controllers 24 DIMM slots in total to give a maximum memory capacity of 768GB.

The Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) PCIe switch that allows you to use up to four hot swappable, high bandwidth flash SSD’s are still an option but with the bump in capacity to 3.2TB each. Unlike standard SSD’s (which can also be specified) these bypass the SAS controller. Be aware you must specify this capability when you order the server as it cannot be retrofitted afterwards. It is a low cost options (€212) so worth ordering if you think you might use NVMe disk later even if not straight away.

Good ideas – Oracle have decided to use the high frequency 6-Core 3.4GHz CPU as an option. This low cost CPU will help those with CPU bound Oracle licensing to get good performance for a minimal amount of cores. (compared to more lower frequency cores). Choose CPU’s wisely, a two 6-core 3.4GHz configuration will be more cost effective and more performant than one 10-Core 2.2GHz config. You will also loose PCIe slots, Network ports and DIMM slots in single CPU configurations.

A 2U disk controller-less all flash version is available for the first time. I have configured up a 2*6-Core 3.4GHz unit with 384GB of memory, quad 10GB Ethernet with all the usual rack kits, redundant fans and power and it comes in under €10K – just add up to nine 3.2GB NVMe drives @ €4,225 each.

This is not a generic server, Oracle owns 100 percent of the design and controls 100 percent of the supply chain and firmware source code. Motherboard, BIOS, and service processor firmware designed 100 percent by Oracle engineers and the entire manufacturing process controlled by Oracle—made in USA.