Newly Released, 3rd Gen. Intel-Powered UCS B200 M6 is Worth the Excitement

Today, we will look at Cisco's newly released UCS B200 M6 Blade Server with powerful capabilities. Cisco introduced Intel into its UCS portfolio with the new third-generation Intel Xeon® Scalable Processors to accelerate IT modernization. Accelerate your hybrid cloud journey with this server, delivering up to 40% more performance, outstanding total cost of ownership (TCO) benefits, significant customer savings, enhanced security, and improved efficiency to easily transition and modernize a wide range of workloads.

The new Cisco UCS B200 M6 Blade Server delivers market-leading performance, density, and versatility without compromising workloads ranging from web infrastructure to distributed databases.

Cisco UCS B200 M6 Blade Server Overview

The powerful Cisco UCS B200 M6 Blade Server delivers performance, flexibility, and optimization for deployments in data centers, cloud, and remote sites. This enterprise-class server offers market-leading versatility, and density without compromise for workloads, including web infrastructure, distributed databases, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), converged infrastructure, and enterprise applications such as SAP HANA and Oracle. The B200 M6 Blade Server can quickly deploy stateless physical and virtual workloads through a programmable, easy-to-use Cisco UCS Manager and Cisco Intersight™ and simplified server access through Cisco® SingleConnect technology.

Cisco UCS B200 M6 Deep-Dive Features

The Cisco UCS B200 M6 Blade Server is a half-width blade. Up to eight servers can reside in the 6-Rack-Unit (6RU) Cisco UCS 5108 Blade Server Chassis, offering one of the highest densities of servers per rack unit of blade chassis in the industry. You can configure the B200 M6 to meet your local storage requirements without buying power and cooling components that you do not need.

The Cisco UCS B200 M6 provides the below key features:

• Supports up to two third-generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Ice Lake) with up to 40 cores per CPU.
• Has 32 DIMM slots for industry-standard DDR4 memory at speeds up to 3200 MHz, with up to 8 TB of total memory when using 512-GB DIMMs. Up to 16 DIMM slots ready for Intel Optane DC PMem to accommodate up to a total of 12 TB of Intel Optane DC persistent memory.
• Modular LAN on Motherboard (mLOM) card with Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card (VIC) 1440, a 2-port, 40-gigabit Ethernet (GE), Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)–capable mLOM mezzanine adapter.
• Optional rear mezzanine VIC with two 40-Gbps unified I/O ports, or two sets of 4 x 10-Gbps unified I/O ports, delivering 80 Gbps to the server; adapts to either 10- or 40-Gbps fabric connections.
• Two optional, hot-pluggable, Solid-State Drives (SSDs), or Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) 2.5-inch drives with a choice of enterprise-class Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAIDs) or pass-through controllers or 4 M.2 SATA drives for flexible boot and local storage capabilities.
• Support for one rear storage mezzanine card.

World-Class Cisco Blade Server Benefits

Here are just a few of the main benefits of implementing a Cisco UCS B200 M6 Blade Server:

• It can do more with less by taking advantage of more CPU cores with the third generation Intel Xeon® Scalable Processor, providing faster memory performance.
• Simplify administration of your server infrastructure with Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS®) management, freeing your IT staff to focus on mission-critical and value-added projects.
• Automate rapid deployment with Cisco UCS Manager or Cisco Intersight™ Managed Mode for faster time to value.
• It can decrease server operating expenses (OpEx) for power and cooling, management, and maintenance by consolidating older servers onto the latest generation of blade servers.

Are you hooked yet? No worries either way. We don't want to force you into a refresh or an upgrade. We are here to provide you with options. Take a look at the short 2-minute video below comparing the M5 and M6 in a real client situation.

A Comparison Between the Cisco UCS B200 M5 and M6 Models

Below, is a list of the main differences between the Cisco UCS B200 M5 and the newer M6 blade server:

For more comparisons head to the Tech Corner where you'll find the UCS B200 M4 matched up to the B200 M5 plus an array of other products in Cisco's UCS lineup.

What Is All the Hype About (New M6 Features)?

The third-generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors offer up to 40 percent more performance with 43 percent more cores than the M5 generation. Moreover, the M6 offers 33 percent more memory - up to 8 TB of memory or 12 TB when combined with Intel Optane™ PMem – way more than the M5 generation. The new Cisco UCS B200 M6 Blade Server offers exceptional levels of performance, flexibility, and I/O throughput to run your applications.

The B200 M6 is the follow-on server to the popular B200 M5 server and includes support for the following:

• 3rd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors (Ice Lake).
• Up to 256 GB 3200-MHz DDR4 memory DIMMs.
• Up to 8 TB total memory (for 2 CPUs) is available if the memory slots are all populated with 32 x 256 GB DDR4 DIMMs or 12 GB total memory if the memory slots are populated with 16 x 256 GB DDR4 DIMMs and 16 x 512 GB PMEMs.

Front mezzanine daughter card options:

• 12G RAID controller module with two 2.5-inch SAS/SATA SSD drives, or
• Pass-through module with two 2.5-inch PCIe NVMe drives, or
• Mini storage carrier with up to four M.2 SATA drives.

The main difference between the new UCS B200 M6 and old servers is the third generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors, 3200 MHz memory, and PCIe 4.0. You can mix the M6 with older servers if you are running the minimum required UCS management software supporting M6 servers. The reason for not having any GPU in the B200 M6 model is because of the motherboard layout changes to support the third-generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors, which prohibits GPU support.

What Does the Ice Lake CPU Bring to the Table?

It is optimized for cloud, enterprise, HPC, network, security, and IoT workloads with 8 to 40 powerful cores and a wide range of frequency, feature, and power levels.

It is infused with Intel Crypto Acceleration, increasing the performance of encryption intensive workloads, including SSL web serving, 5G infrastructure, and VPN/ firewalls, while reducing the performance impact of pervasive encryption.

It is the only data center CPU with built-in AI acceleration, end-to-end data science tools, and an ecosystem of intelligent solutions.

It is engineered for the demands of cloud workloads and to support a wide range of XaaS environments. Lastly, it is powered by Intel SGX, which protects data and application code while in use from the edge to the data center and multi-tenant public cloud.

Is Your Server Infrastructure Future-Proofed?

The main benefit of the new UCS B200 M6 is the third generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors (Ice Lake). It has more cores than the M5 server. Furthermore, it can deliver 40 percent more performance than the M5 series by utilizing more CPU. So, if anyone is planning for a new deployment or hardware refresh from an older server, the B200 M6 is a perfect choice. If you are still using the B200 M4, Cisco has announced the end of life date. Implementing the B200 M6 series will be the ideal replacement and will ensure your system is future-proofed for performance and support.