Cisco UCS XE9305 Cover 2
Cisco has a new edge computing platform. The Cisco UCS XE9305 is the company’s newest generation edge computing platform. The first compute node for it is the Cisco UCS XE130c M8, based on the Intel Xeon 6 SoC with support for E3.S and M.2 SSDs, along with a low-profile card slot to integrate AI accelerators like the NVIDIA L4 GPU.
Cisco UCS XE9305 3U Edge Server Launched
The chassis itself is 3U tall, 19″ wide, but only 18″ deep, meaning it can fit into a variety of edge racks. Like many telecom or retail edge boxes we have reviewed, this has all of the cabling in the front of the unit to make it easy to service.
Cisco UCS XE9305 Front 1
The first compute node is the Cisco UCS XE130c M8. We can see four of them in the system above, but up to five c…
Cisco UCS XE9305 Cover 2
Cisco has a new edge computing platform. The Cisco UCS XE9305 is the company’s newest generation edge computing platform. The first compute node for it is the Cisco UCS XE130c M8, based on the Intel Xeon 6 SoC with support for E3.S and M.2 SSDs, along with a low-profile card slot to integrate AI accelerators like the NVIDIA L4 GPU.
Cisco UCS XE9305 3U Edge Server Launched
The chassis itself is 3U tall, 19″ wide, but only 18″ deep, meaning it can fit into a variety of edge racks. Like many telecom or retail edge boxes we have reviewed, this has all of the cabling in the front of the unit to make it easy to service.
Cisco UCS XE9305 Front 1
The first compute node is the Cisco UCS XE130c M8. We can see four of them in the system above, but up to five can be installed in the chassis. Each can have three E3.S SSDs in the I/O focused verison, but then there is an option for four E3.S SSDs. Inside, there is also ano option for two M.2 SSDs. There is also a low profile slot for more networking. Of course, given the era we are in also it can support low profile GPUs like the NVIDIA L4.
Cisco UCS XE130c M8 Compute Node Front White
Inside, there is an Intel Xeon 6 SoC with either 12, 20, or 32 cores. This is interesting, as the higher-core-count Xeon 6 SoC parts are expected to arrive in the market this quarter. The memory in these systems is four channels of DDR5-6400 with eight slots, so up to 2 DPC.
There are also two Cisco UCS Edge Chassis Management Controllers. Cisco is using 25GbE in this generation to connect the nodes. Each node has two front-facing 10Gbase-T ports, but it also gets two midplane 25GbE ports that connect to the integrated switches on the chassis management controllers.
Cisco UCS XE9305 Dual Cisco UCS Edge Chassis Management Controllers
The chassis gets two power supplies for redundancy. Each is 2.4kW.
Cisco UCS XE9305 Front 2
On the rear, there are only fans. Cisco says this system can be tuned to run at 40dba, which is awesome.
Cisco UCS XE9305 Rear Fans
We found a picture of the security Bezel, and it is a big one!
Cisco UCS XE9305 Front Bezel
Overall, a fairly neat system.
Final Words
This is a higher-density blade chassis option for edge deployments. Something like the HPE ProLiant DL145 Gen11 is designed for higher-end single nodes, but this is a denser deployment, especially with the integrated switches. It is also a multi-node UCS system that is more integrated than we saw in our older Cisco UCS C4200 Review. Apparently, we also have another piece queued where the Dell multi-node chassis makes a cameo. Still, this looks absolutely awesome.