Cisco B200 M5 and M6 Updates
With the UCS B200 M5s going End of New Service (EONS) October 29th, it is important to understand the needs of your business and your options. EONS simply means that you can no longer add a specific model (B200 M5s in this instance) under Cisco support following the EONS date. Customers have several options, at their disposal, to navigate these changes — expand B200 M5 Blades before the EONS date, switch to third-party maintenance support, or upgrade to the M6. To help you navigate this landscape, we have outlined some key specifications about the M5 and M6 Blades, as well as support options for your Cisco infrastructure moving forward.
Overview of Cisco UCS Servers
The two primary types of Cisco servers that businesses heavily rely on are Rack and Blade servers.
- Rack Servers: Rack servers are standalone servers that slide into an IT rack. Cisco UCS C-Series rack servers are designed for high performance and versatility, supporting a wide variety of applications and workloads.
- Blade Servers: Cisco UCS B-Series blade servers, including the B200 M5 and M6 Series, are compact, high-density servers that are installed in a blade enclosure. By housing multiple server blades in a single chassis, they maximize resource efficiency, reduce space requirements, and simplify management.
Key Features of the Cisco B200 M5
Cisco B200 M5 Blade Servers are high performance, flexible, and easy to manage, making M5 Blade servers ideal for a variety of applications, including virtualization, cloud computing, and data analytics. M5 Blades provide high performance with a smaller footprint, compared to equivalent M5 series Rack Servers.
Key features include:
- Processor Power: Equipped with Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors, the B200 M5 supports up to 9TB of memory and high performance.
- Memory and Storage: Support for up to 24 DDR4 DIMM slots, including NVMe drives for ultra-fast storage access.
- Unified Fabric: Cisco’s fabric interconnect technology simplifies the server’s networking, storage, and management by consolidating these into a single interface.
- Modular Flexibility: Customizable configurations to support a variety of use cases, from high-performance computing to simple virtualization.
- Management: Integrated with Cisco UCS Manager, allowing smooth management and automation of compute resources.
Support Options for the Cisco B200 M5
There are several support options businesses can choose from to maintain their Cisco equipment after the EONS date:
- Cisco SmartNet OEM Support: Provides 24/7 support direct from the original manufacturer. Features include proactive diagnostics, engineer dispatch, and updates to ensure peak performance. The benefit of OEM support is that customers have direct access to the manufacturer. The downside is that OEM support is often more expensive than alternative third-party maintenance. Manufacturer support also has strict End of Service Life (EOSL) dates, and companies will have to regularly upgrade their equipment to remain on OEM support.
Alert: Cisco B200 M5 Blade Servers are going EONS with SmartNet on October 29, 2024. After this date, customers can no longer add devices to support contracts. Devices already under support will continue to be supported until the final End of Service date.
- Third-Party Maintenance (TPM) Support: TPM provides 24/7 technical IT hardware and maintenance support outside of the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) post-warranty. TPM provides the advantage of not needing to regularly upgrade hardware and allows customers to greatly extend the life of their assets. TPM also allows customers to gain maintenance and support for multiple manufacturers from a single provider. Park Place Technologies offers TPM support priced 30-40% less than the OEM, along with Day 1 support and post warranty. It’s important to note that specific software and firmware updates will not always be available on TPM.
- Self-Sparing Strategies: This includes purchasing additional blades and/or complete configurations to deploy in case of device failures in production. While self-sparing may avoid the annual maintenance fees on the front end, the client should be aware that there are some hidden costs/risks to this strategy. It can be costly to keep the spare on the books as a fixed asset, safely store and track the spare devices, and costly labor to deploy the spare. Alternatively, TPM providers typically have a deep bench of technical support engineers with a wide breadth of experience and may be able to troubleshoot issues faster than internal IT teams.
Upgrade to the Next Generation: Cisco B200 M6
Cisco B200 M6 Series is the successor to the widely deployed M5 series blade servers. If you are looking to upgrade from M5 to something more current following the M5 EONS date, the M6 is the optimal choice
M6 key features include:
- Advanced Processor Options: The M6 offers support for Intel Xeon 3rd Generation Scalable Processors with more cores and faster clock speeds than previous generations, making it ideal for AI, machine learning, and other compute-heavy workloads.
- Expanded Memory Support: The M6 increases memory capacity with support for up to 32 memory DIMMs with 12TB total DDR4 RAM, enabling larger data sets for big data analytics and in-memory databases.
- Improved Storage Flexibility: Enhanced NVMe support and more storage options allow businesses to optimize for speed, capacity, or both.
- Next-Generation Networking: Higher throughput, low-latency networking capabilities enhance the M6’s performance in high-bandwidth environments, such as data-intensive applications and 5G infrastructures.
- Advanced Security Features: The M6 includes built-in security enhancements such as hardware root-of-trust and real-time threat detection, ensuring compliance with modern security standards.
Market Conditions
As some of Cisco’s flagship server products, B200 M5 and M6 Blades have been widely deployed globally within many enterprise IT environments. As the B200 M5 heads toward EONS, it’s important for clients to consider the key requirements for their server infrastructure and whether they will choose to continue to run their M5 series systems into the future, or whether an upgrade to M6 (or newer generation UCSX series M7/M8) will need to be budgeted and planned for.
With many companies choosing to upgrade to newer generation UCS servers, Curvature expects the market sweet spot to improve for M5 Blade systems. As clients upgrade to M6 and newer M7/M8 systems over the next few years, we expect older generation M5 systems to become more available at lower price points in the secondary market. For companies currently using pre-M5 systems (ex. M4 Blades) they may find M5 to be the optimal choice in terms of cost vs. performance and can upgrade to M5 solutions for a fraction of the cost of the “latest gen” systems. For clients in need of more contemporary solutions, Curvature and Park Place Technologies can support M6 and M7 and often find significant cost savings for our clients vs. purchasing from the OEM. According to market reports, global server sales are expected to grow steadily, fueled by increasing demand in industries such as healthcare, finance, and telecommunications.
For questions or inquiries on previous and current-gen UCS Cisco Blade Servers and the upcoming EONS date, reach out to the Curvature team — we are ready to help!
