The Dell M1000e is an enclosure made by Dell to house their blade server products, and embedded EqualLogic iSCSI storage area network and I/O modules including Ethernet, Fibre Channel and InfiniBand switches.
Enclosure The M1000e fits in a 19-inch rack and is 10 rack units high (44 cm), 17.6" (44.7 cm) wide and 29.7" (75.4 cm) deep. The empty blade enclosure weighs 44.5 kg while a fully loaded system can weigh up to 178.8 kg.Dell website Tech specs for the M1000e, visited 10 March 2013
On the front the servers are inserted while at the backside the power-supplies, fans and I/O modules are inserted together with the management modules(s) (CMC or chassis management controller) and the KVM switch. A blade enclosure offers centralized management for the servers and I/O systems of the blade-system. Most servers used in the blade-system offer an iDRAC card and one can connect to each servers iDRAC via the M1000e management system. It is also possible to connect a virtual KVM switch to have access to the main-console of each installed server.
In June 2013, Dell introduced the PowerEdge VRTX, which is a smaller blade system that shares modules with the M1000e. The blade servers, although following the traditional naming strategy e.g. M520, M620 (only blades supported) are not interchangeable between the VRTX and the M1000e. The blades differ in firmware and mezzanine connectors.
In 2018, Dell introduced the Dell PE MX7000, a new MX enclosure model, next generation of Dell enclosures.
The M1000e enclosure has a front-side and a back-side and thus all communication between the inserted blades and modules goes via the midplane, which has the same function as a backplane but has connectors at both sides where the front side is dedicated for server-blades and the back for I/O modules.
Midplane
The midplane is completely passive. The server-blades are inserted in the front side of the enclosure while all other components can be reached via the back.Dell support website M1000e owners manual, retrieved 26 October 2012 The original midplane 1.0 capabilities are Fabric A - Ethernet 1 Gb; Fabrics B&C - Ethernet 1 Gb, 10 Gb, 40 Gb - Fibre Channel 4 Gb, 8 Gb - InfiniBand DDR, QDR, FDR10. The enhanced midplane 1.1 capabilities are Fabric A - Ethernet 1 Gb, 10 Gb; Fabrics B&C - Ethernet 1 Gb, 10 Gb, 40 Gb - Fibre Channel 4 Gb, 8 Gb, 16 Gb - InfiniBand DDR, QDR, FDR10, FDR. The original M1000e enclosures came with midplane version 1.0 but that midplane did not support the 10GBASE-KR standard on fabric A (10GBASE-KR standard is supported on fabrics B&C). To have 10 Gb Ethernet on fabric A or 16 Gb Fibre Channel or InfiniBand FDR (and faster) on fabrics B&C, midplane 1.1 is required. Current versions of the enclosure come with midplane 1.1 and it is possible to upgrade the midplane. Via the markings on the back-side of the enclosure, just above the I/O modules: if an "arrow down" can be seen above the 6 I/O slots the 1.0 midplane was installed in the factory; if there are 3 or 4 horizontal bars, midplane 1.1 was installed. As it is possible to upgrade the midplane the outside markings are not decisive: via the CMC management interface actual installed version of the midplane is visiblePowerEdge M1000e Installation Guide, Revision A05, page 47-51. Date: March 2011. Retrieved: 25 January 2013
Front:Blade servers Each M1000e enclosure can hold up to 32 quarter-height, 16 half-height blades or 8 full-height or combinations (e.g. 1 full-height + 14 half-height). The slots are numbered 1-16 where 1-8 are the upper blades and 9-16 are directly beneath 1-8. When using full-height blades one use slot n (where n=1 to 8) and slot n+8 Integrated at the bottom of the front-side is a connection-option for 2 x USB, meant for a mouse and keyboard, as well as a standard VGA monitor connection (15 pin). Next to this is a power-button with power-indication.
Next to this is a small LCD with navigation buttons which allows one to get system-information without the need to access the CMC/management system of the enclosure. Basic status and configuration information is available via this display. To operate the display one can pull it towards one and tilt it for optimal view and access to the navigation button. For quick status checks, an indicator light sits alongside the LCD and is always visible, with a blue LED indicating normal operation and an orange LED indicating a problem of some kind.
This LCD can also be used for the initial configuration wizard in a newly delivered (unconfigured) system, allowing the operator to configure the CMC IP address.
Back:power, management and I/O All other parts and modules are placed at the rear of the M1000e. The rear-side is divided in 3 sections: top: here one insert the 3 management-modules: one or two CMC modules and an optional iKVM module. At the bottom of the enclosure there are 6 bays for power-supply units. A standard M1000e operates with three PSU's The area in between offers 3 x 3 bays for cooling-fans (left - middle - right) and up to 6 I/O modules: three modules to the left of the middle fans and three to the right. The I/O modules on the left are the I/O modules numbered A1, B1 and C1 while the right hand side has places for A2, B2 and C2. The A fabric I/O modules connect to the on-board I/O controllers which in most cases will be a dual 1 Gb or 10 Gb Ethernet NIC. When the blade has a dual port on-board 1 Gb NIC the first NIC will connect to the I/O module in fabric A1 and the 2nd NIC will connect to fabric A2 (and the blade-slot corresponds with the internal Ethernet interface: e.g. the on-board NIC in slot 5 will connect to interface 5 of fabric A1 and the 2nd on-board NIC goes to interface 5 of fabric A2)
I/O modules in fabric B1/B2 will connect to the (optional) Mezzanine card B or 2 in the server and fabric C to Mezzanine C or 3.
All modules can be inserted or removed on a running enclosure (Hot swapping)
Available server-blades An M1000e holds up to 32 quarter-height, 16 half-height blades or 8 full-height blades or a mix of them (e.g. 2 full height + 12 half-height). The 1/4 height blades require a full-size sleeve to install. The current list are the currently available 11G blades and the latest generation 12 models. There are also older blades like the M605, M805 and M905 series.
Power Edge M420 Released in 2012, PE M420 is a "quarter-size" blade: where most servers are 'half-size', allowing 16 blades per M1000e enclosure, with the new M420 up to 32 blade servers can be installed in a single chassis. Implementing the M420 has some consequences for the system: many people have reserved 16 IP addresses per chassis to support the "automatic IP address assignment" for the iDRAC management card in a blade, but as it is now possible to run 32 blades per chassis people might need to change their management IP assignment for the iDRAC. To support the M420 server one needs to run CMC firmware 4.1 or later and one needs a full-size "sleeve" that holds up to four M420 blades. It also has consequences for the "normal" I/O NIC assignment: most (half-size) blades have two LOMs (LAN On Motherboard): one connecting to the switch in the A1 fabric, the other to the A2 fabric. And the same applies to the Mezzanine cards B and C. All available I/O modules (except for the PCM6348, MXL an MIOA) have 16 internal ports: one for each half-size blade. As an M420 has two 10 Gb LOM NICs, a fully loaded chassis would require 2 × 32 internal switch ports for LOM and the same for Mezzanine. An M420 server only supports a single Mezzanine card (Mezzanine B OR Mezzanine C depending on their location) whereas all half-height and full-height systems support two Mezzanine cards. To support all on-board NICs one would need to deploy a 32-slot Ethernet switch such as the MXL or Force10 I/O Aggregator. But for the Mezzanine card it is different: the connections from Mezzanine B on the PE M420 are "load-balanced" between the B and C-fabric of the M1000e: the Mezzanine card in "slot A" (top slot in the sleeve) connects to Fabric C while "slot B" (the second slot from the top) connects to fabric B, and that is then repeated for C and D slots in the sleeve.
Power Edge M520 A half-height server with up to 2x 8 core Intel Xeon E5-2400 CPU, running the Intel C600 chipset and offering up to 384 Gb RAM memory via 12 DIMM slots. Two on-blade disks (2.5-inch PCIe SSD, SATA HDD or SAS HDD) are installable for local storage and a choice of Intel or Broadcom LOM + 2 Mezzanine slots for I/O.Dell website: Poweredge M630 Technical specifications, visited 29 August 2016. The M520 can also be used in the PowerEdge VRTX system.
Power Edge M600
A half-height server with a Quad-Core Intel Xeon and 8 DIMM slots for up to 64 GB RAM
Power Edge M610 A half-height server with a quad-core or six-core Intel 5500 or 5600 Xeon CPU and Intel 5520 chipset. RAM memory options via 12 DIMM slots for up to 192 Gb RAM DDR3. A maximum of two on-blade hot-pluggable 2.5-inch hard-disks or SSDs and a choice of built-in NICs for Ethernet or converged network adapter (CNA), Fibre Channel or InfiniBand. The server has the Intel 5520 chipset and a Matrox G200 video cardTech Specs brochure PowerEdge M610, updated 20 December 2011
Power Edge M610x A full-height blade server that has the same capabilities as the half-height M610 but offering an expansion module containing x16 PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0 expansion slots that can support up to two standard full-length/full-height PCIe cards.Technical specs of the Dell PowerEdge M610x, retrieved 20 December 2011
Power Edge M620 A half-height server with up to 2x 12 core Intel Xeon E5-2600 or Xeon E5-2600 v2 CPUs, running the Intel C600 chipset and offering up to 768 GB RAM memory via 24 DIMM slots. Two on-blade disks (2,5" PCIe SSD, SATA HDD or SAS HDD) are installable for local storage with a range of RAID controller options. Two external and one internal USB ports and two SD card slots. The blades can come pre-installed with Windows 2008 R2 SP1, Windows 2012 R2, SuSE Linux Enterprise or RHEL. It can also be ordered with Citrix XenServer or VMware vSphere ESXi or using Hyper-V which comes with W2K8 R2.Overview of technical specifications of the Poweredge M620, visited 12 June 2012 According to the vendor all Generation 12 servers are optimized to run as virtualisation platform.Dell website announcing G12 servers with details on virtualisation , visited 12 June 2012 Out-of-band management is done via iDRAC 7 via the CMC.
Power Edge M630 A half-height server with up to 2 x 22-core Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3/v4 CPUs, running the Intel C610 chipset and offering up to 768 GB RAM memory via 24 DIMM slots, or 640 GB RAM memory via 20 DIMM slots when using 145-watt CPUs. Two on-blade disks (2,5" PCIe SSD, SATA HDD or SAS HDD) are installable for local storage and a choice of Intel or Broadcom LOM + 2 Mezzanine slots for I/O. The M630 can also be used in the PowerEdge VRTX system. Amulet HotKey offers a modified M630 server that can be fitted with a GPU or Teradici PCoIP Mezzanine module.
Power Edge M640 A half-height server with up to 2 x 28-core Xeon Scalable CPU. Supported on both the M1000e and PowerEdge VRTX chassis. The server can support up to 16 DDR4 RDIMM memory slots for up to 1024 GB RAM and 2 drive bays supporting SAS / SATA or NVMe drives (with an adapter). The server uses iDRAC 9.
Power Edge M710 A full-height server with a quad-core or six-core Intel 5500 or 5600 Xeon CPU and up to 192 Gb RAM. A maximum of four on-blade hot-pluggable 2.5" hard-disks or SSD's and a choice of built-in NICs for Ethernet or converged network adapter, Fibre Channel or InfiniBand. The video card is a Matrox G200.The server has the Intel 5520 chipsetTech Specs brochure PowerEdge M710, retrieved 27 June 2011
Power Edge M710HD