Dell EMC PowerEdge T550 Technical Guide Part Number: E76S Regulatory Type: E76S001 December 2021 Rev.
Notes, cautions, and warnings NOTE: A NOTE indicates important information that helps you make better use of your product. CAUTION: A CAUTION indicates either potential damage to hardware or loss of data and tells you how to avoid the problem. WARNING: A WARNING indicates a potential for property damage, personal injury, or death. © 2021 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. All rights reserved. Dell, EMC, and other trademarks are trademarks of Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries.
Contents Chapter 1: Product overview......................................................................................................... 5 Introduction...........................................................................................................................................................................5 Product features..................................................................................................................................................................
Chapter 9: Supported Operating Systems................................................................................... 49 Chapter 10: Dell EMC OpenManage systems management........................................................... 50 Server and Chassis Managers.........................................................................................................................................51 Dell EMC consoles..........................................................................................
1 Product overview Topics: • • Introduction Product features Introduction The Dell™ PowerEdge™ T550 is Dell's latest 2-socket, tower server designed to run complex workloads using highly scalable memory, I/O, and network options. The systems feature the Intel Ice Lake Processor ( Socket P+ LGA-4189 ), up to 16 DIMMs, PCI Express® (PCIe) 4. 0 enabled expansion slots, and a choice of network interface technologies to cover NIC.
2 System features Topics: • Product comparison Product comparison Table 1.
Table 1.
Table 1. Product comparison (continued) Features PowerEdge T550 PowerEdge T640 ● TPM 1.2/2.0 FIPS, CC-TCG certified, TPM 2.0 China NationZ Embedded NIC 2 x 1 GbE LOM 2 x 10 GbE Networking options OCP x16 Mezz 3.0 - GPU options Up to two double wide 300 W, or five single wide 70 W accelerators Up to four double wide 300 W or eight single wide 150 W accelerators Ports Front ports Front ports ● 1 x Dedicated iDRAC micro-USB ● 1 x USB 2.0 ● 1 x USB 3.0 ● 6 x USB 2.0/3.
3 Chassis views and features Topics: • • • • Front view of the system Rear view of the system Inside the system Quick Resource Locator for PowerEdge T550 system Front view of the system Figure 1. Front view of 24 x 2.
Table 2. Features available on the front of the system Item Ports, panels, and slots 1 Power button Icon Description Indicates if the system is powered on or off. Press the power button to manually power on or off the system. NOTE: Press the power button to gracefully shut down an ACPIcompliant operating system. 2 System health and ID indicator 3 Information tag N/A The Information tag is a slide-out label panel that contains system information such as Service Tag, NIC, MAC address, and so on.
Figure 2. Front view of 16 x 2.5-inch drive system Table 3. Features available on the front of the system Item Ports, panels, and slots 1 Power button Icon Description Indicates if the system is powered on or off. Press the power button to manually power on or off the system. NOTE: Press the power button to gracefully shut down an ACPIcompliant operating system. 2 System health and ID indicator Indicates the status of the system.
Table 3. Features available on the front of the system (continued) Item Ports, panels, and slots Icon 5 USB 2.0 port The USB ports are 4-pin, 2.0-compliant. These ports enable you to connect USB devices to the system. 6 USB 3.0 port The USB ports are 9-pin and 3.0-compliant. These ports enable you to connect USB devices to the system. 7 BOSS S2 module (optional) N/A This slot supports the BOSS S2 module. 8 Drive Enables you to install SAS/SATA drives that are supported on your system.
Table 4. Features available on the front of the system (continued) Item Ports, panels, and slots Icon Description 2 System health and ID indicator 3 Information tag N/A The Information tag is a slide-out label panel that contains system information such as Service Tag, NIC, MAC address, and so on. If you have opted for the secure default access to iDRAC, then the Information tag also contains the iDRAC secure default password.
Figure 4. Front view of 8 x 3.5-inch drive system Table 5. Features available on the front of the system Item Ports, panels, and slots 1 Power button Icon Description Indicates if the system is powered on or off. Press the power button to manually power on or off the system. NOTE: Press the power button to gracefully shut down an ACPIcompliant operating system. 2 System health and ID indicator Indicates the status of the system.
Table 5. Features available on the front of the system (continued) Item Ports, panels, and slots Icon 5 USB 2.0 port The USB ports are 4-pin, 2.0-compliant. These ports enable you to connect USB devices to the system. 6 USB 3.0 port The USB ports are 9-pin and 3.0-compliant. These ports enable you to connect USB devices to the system. 7 BOSS S2 module (optional) N/A This slot supports the BOSS S2 module. 8 Drive Enables you to install SAS/SATA drives that are supported on your system.
Table 6. Features available on the front of the system (continued) Item Ports, panels, and slots 2 iDRAC Quick Sync 2 N/A wireless indicator (optional) Quick Sync 2 (wireless): Indicates a Quick Sync enabled system. The Quick Sync feature is optional. This feature allows management of the system by using mobile devices called as OpenManage Mobile (OMM) feature.
Figure 6. Front view of 8 x 2.5-inch drive system Table 7. Features available on the front of the system Item Ports, panels, and slots 1 Power button Icon Description Indicates if the system is powered on or off. Press the power button to manually power on or off the system. NOTE: Press the power button to gracefully shut down an ACPIcompliant operating system. 2 System health and ID indicator Indicates the status of the system.
Table 7. Features available on the front of the system (continued) Item Ports, panels, and slots Icon 5 USB 2.0 port The USB ports are 4-pin, 2.0-compliant. These ports enable you to connect USB devices to the system. 6 USB 3.0 port The USB ports are 9-pin and 3.0-compliant. These ports enable you to connect USB devices to the system. 7 BOSS S2 module (optional) N/A This slot supports the BOSS S2 module. 8 Drive Enables you to install SAS/SATA drives that are supported on your system.
Table 8. Rear view of the system Item Ports, panels, or slots Icon Description 1 Power supply unit (PSU 1) N/A This is the primary PSU of the system. For more information about the PSU configurations, see www.dell.com/poweredgemanuals. 2 Power supply unit (PSU 2) N/A This PSU provides redundancy to the system. For more information about the PSU configurations, see www.dell.com/ poweredgemanuals. 3 PCIe expansion card slots (4) N/A Enables you to connect PCI Express expansion cards.
Inside the system Figure 8. Inside the system for 24 x 2.5-inch configuration 1. 3. 5. 7. 9. 20 Tape backup unit Intrusion switch Cable retention clip OCP air shroud Cooling fan cage Chassis views and features 2. 4. 6. 8. 10. Cooling fan Power interposer board PSU 1 System board 2.
Figure 9. Inside the system for 8 x 3.5-inch + 8 x 2.5-inch configuration 1. 3. 5. 7. 9. 11. Tape backup unit Intrusion switch GPU card holder PSU 1 System board Front PERC module 2. 4. 6. 8. 10.
Quick Resource Locator for PowerEdge T550 system Figure 10.
4 Processor Topics: • Processor features Processor features The 3 rd Generation Xeon ® Scalable Processors stack is the next generation data center processor offering with the latest features, increased performance, and incremental memory options. This latest generation Xeon Scalable processor supports usages from entry designs that are based on Intel Xeon Silver processors to advanced capabilities offered in new Intel Xeon Platinum processor.
5 Memory Topics: • Supported memory Supported memory The table below lists the memory technologies supported by the platform. Table 10. Supported memory technologies Feature T550 (DDR4) DIMM Type RDIMM Transfer Speed 2933 MT/s and 3200 MT/s Voltage 1.2 V (DDR4) The following table lists the supported DIMMs for the T550 at launch. For the latest information about supported DIMMs, see the Memory NDA Deck.
6 Storage Topics: • • • Drive backplane PERC Controller Storage Drive backplane Depending on your system configuration, the drive backplanes supported are listed here: Table 13. Supported backplane options System PowerEdge T550 Supported drives options 8 x 2.5-inch SAS/SATA backplane 8 x 3.5-inch SAS/SATA backplane Figure 11. 3.5-inch drive backplane 1. BP_PWR_1 2.
Figure 12. 2.5-inch drive backplane 1. BP_PWR_CTRL 3. BP_PWR_1 2. BP_SIG 4. BP_DST PERC Controller The Dell EMC PowerEdge RAID Controller (PERC) family of enterprise-class controllers is designed for enhanced performance, increased reliability, and fault tolerance. PERC controller also simplifies management - providing a powerful, easy-to-manage way to create a robust infrastructure and help maximize system uptime. Table 14.
Table 15. Supported Drives - SAS, SATA and NVMe (continued) Form Factor Type Spe ed 2.5-inch (U.2) NVMe SSD Gen4 N/A 960 GB, 1.6 TB, 1.92 TB, 3.2 TB, 3.84 TB, 6.4 TB, 7.68 TB NVMe SSD Gen3 N/A 375 GB, 400 GB, 750 GB, 800 GB, 960 GB, 1.6 TB, 1.92 TB, 3.2 TB, 3.84 TB, 6.4 TB, 7.68 TB SATA 6 Gb 7.2 K 2 TB, 4 TB, 8 TB, 12 TB, 16 TB SAS 12 Gb 7.2 K 2 TB, 4 TB, 8 TB, 12 TB, 16TB M.2 SATA SSD 6 GB N/A 240 GB, 480 GB uSD N/A N/A 16 GB, 32 GB, 64 GB 3.
7 Networking and PCIe Topics: • • • Overview OCP 3.0 support Expansion card installation guidelines Overview PowerEdge offers a wide variety of options to get information moving to and from our servers. Industry best technologies are chosen, and systems management features are added by our partners to firmware to tie in with iDRAC. These adapters are rigorously validated for worry-free, fully supported use in Dell servers.
Supported OCP cards Table 17. Supported OCP Form Factor Vendor Port type Port speed Port count OCP 3.0 Intel SFP+ 10 GbE 2 OCP 3.0 Broadcom BT 1 GbE 4 OCP 3.0 Broadcom BT 10 GbE 2 OCP 3.0 Broadcom SFP28 25 GbE 2 OCP 3.0 Broadcom SFP28 25 GbE 4 OCP 3.0 Broadcom SFP+ 10 GbE 2 OCP 3.0 QLogic BT 10 GbE 2 OCP 3.0 QLogic SFP+ 10 GbE 2 OCP 3.0 QLogic SFP28 25 GbE 2 OCP 3.0 Intel BT 1 GbE 4 OCP 3.0 Intel BT 10 GbE 2 OCP 3.0 Intel SFP+ 10 GbE 4 OCP 3.
OCP form factors Figure 13. OCP 3.0 small card form factor (LS) Table 19. OCP 3.0 Feature List Features OCP 3.0 Form factor SFF and LFF PCIe Gen Gen4 Max PCIe width X16 Max of ports 4 Port type BT/SFP/SFP+/SFP28/SFP56 Max port speed 100Gbe NC-SI Yes SNAPI Yes WoL Yes Power consumption 15 W — 150 W Expansion card installation guidelines Table 20.
Table 21. Configuration type C0 Card Type Slot priority Maximum number of cards FPERC 10.15 H345 Internal 2 PERC/HBA 10.
Table 22.
Table 23.
Table 24. Configuration type C1-1 (continued) Card Type Slot priority Maximum number of cards PCIe SSD Gen4: Samsung 1, 6 2 GPU: Nvidia A10, A30, A40 1 1 GPU: Nvidia T4 1, 6 2 Serial port module: Inventec 5 1 Foxconn external adapter 1, 6 H840 2 Foxconn external adapter 1, 6 HBA355e 2 aPERC HBA11 HBA355i 1 6 Table 25. Configuration type C2 Card Type Slot priority Maximum number of cards FPERC 10.15 H345 Internal 2 PERC/HBA 10.
Table 25.
8 Power, thermal, and acoustics PowerEdge servers have an extensive collection of sensors that automatically track thermal activity, which helps regulate temperature thereby reducing server noise and power consumption. The table below lists the tools and technologies Dell offers to lower power consumption and increase energy efficiency. Topics: • • • Power Thermal Acoustics Power Table 26.
Table 26. Power tools and technologies (continued) Feature Description Rack infrastructure Dell offers some of the industry's highest-efficiency power infrastructure solutions, including: ● Power distribution units (PDUs) ● Uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) ● Energy Smart containment rack enclosures Find additional information at: https://www.delltechnologies.com/en-us/servers/power-andcooling.htm. PSU specifications The PowerEdge T550 system supports up to two AC power supply units (PSUs).
NOTE: This system is also designed to connect to the IT power systems with a phase-to-phase voltage not exceeding 240 V. NOTE: Heat dissipation is calculated using the PSU wattage rating. NOTE: When selecting or upgrading the system configuration, to ensure optimum power utilization, verify the system power consumption with the Dell Energy Smart Solution Advisor available at Dell.com/ESSA.
● Environmental Specifications: The optimized thermal management makes the T550 reliable under a wide range of operating environments. Acoustics Acoustical design Dell EMC PowerEdge delivers sound quality and smooth transient response in addition to sound power levels and sound pressure levels oriented to deployment environments. Sound quality describes how disturbing or pleasing a person finds a sound, as a function of a variety of psycho-acoustical metrics and thresholds.
Table 29. Dell Enterprise Category 1, “Table-top in Office Environment” acoustical specification category.
When Dell determines that a specific Enterprise product is to be used primarily when it is sitting on the floor, that is, next to a user’s feet, then the acoustical specification in the table below applies. Noise from the product should not annoy or otherwise interfere with the user’s thoughts or speech, for example, on the telephone. Table 30.
Category 3: General Use Space When Dell determines that a specific Enterprise product is to be predominantly used in a general use space, then the acoustical specification of the table below applies. These products could be found in laboratories, schools, restaurants, open office space layouts, small ventilated closets, etc., though not in close proximity to any particular person nor in quantities greater than a few in any location.
Table 31.
Table 32. Dell Enterprise Category 4, “Attended Data Center” acoustical specification category.
Table 33.
Table 33.
Table 34. Hardware and software configurations for lower acoustical output (continued) Configuration Minimum Basic Mainstream Feature Rich Hilltop PCI 3 N/A N/A Dual Port 10GbE NIC N/A N/A Front PERC PERC H345, H355 PERC H745P PERC H745P PERC H745P PERC H745P LOM Card 1 Gb 1 Gb 1 Gb 1 Gb 1 Gb Table 35.
● Storage type: NVME SSD consumes more power than SAS/SATA drives, and will pre-heat down-stream components (e.g., Processor, DIMM), and hence requires higher fan speeds and hence higher acoustical outputs. ● System thermal profile selection in BIOS or iDRAC GUI: ○ Default Thermal Profile, generally provides a lower air mover speed thus lower acoustical output than those of other thermal profiles.
9 Supported Operating Systems The PowerEdge T550 system supports the following operating systems: ● ● ● ● ● ● Canonical® Ubuntu® Server LTS Citrix® Hypervisor® Microsoft® Windows Server® with Hyper-V Red Hat® Enterprise Linux SUSE® Linux Enterprise server VMware® ESXi® Links to specific OS versions and editions, certification matrices, Hardware Compatibility Lists (HCL) portal, and Hypervisor support are available at Dell EMC Enterprise Operating Systems.
10 Dell EMC OpenManage systems management Figure 15. Dell EMC OpenManage Portfolio Dell EMC delivers management solutions that help IT Administrators effectively deploy, update, monitor, and manage IT assets. OpenManage solutions and tools enable you to quickly respond to problems by helping them to manage Dell EMC servers effectively and efficiently; in physical, virtual, local, and remote environments, operating in-band, and out-of-band (agent-free).
Server and Chassis Managers ● Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) ● iDRAC Service Module (iSM) Dell EMC consoles ● ● ● ● Dell Dell Dell Dell EMC EMC EMC EMC OpenManage Enterprise Repository Manager (DRM) OpenManage Enterprise Power Manager plugin to OpenManage Enterprise OpenManage Mobile (OMM) Automation Enablers ● ● ● ● ● OpenManage Ansible Modules iDRAC RESTful APIs (Redfish) Standards-based APIs (Python, PowerShell) RACADM Command Line Interface (CLI) GitHub Scripting Libraries Integ
Table 36. Dell resources Resource Location Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) https://www.dell.com/idracmanuals iDRAC Service Module (iSM) https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/000178050/ OpenManage Ansible Modules https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/000177308/ OpenManage Essentials (OME) https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/000175879/ OpenManage Mobile (OMM) https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/000176046 OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter (OMIVV) https://www.dell.
11 Appendix A. Additional specifications Topics: • • • • • Chassis dimensions System weight Video specifications USB ports specifications Environmental specifications Chassis dimensions Figure 16. Chassis dimensions Appendix A.
Table 37. Chassis dimension for the system Drives A B C D E (with Bezel) 24 x 2.5-inch / 8 x 3.5-inch + 8 x 2.5inch NVMe 446.0 mm (17.60 inches) 459.0 mm (18.07 inches) 200.0 mm (7.87 inches) 663.5 mm (26.12 680.5 mm (26.79 inches) inches) NOTE: Zb is the nominal rear wall external surface where the system board I/O connectors reside. System weight Table 38. System weight of the PowerEdge T550 system System configuration Maximum weight (with all drives/SSDs) 8 x 3.5-inch + 8 x 2.
NOTE: The micro USB 2.0 compliant port can only be used as an iDRAC Direct or a management port. NOTE: The USB 2.0 specifications provide a 5 V supply on a single wire to power connected USB devices. A unit load is defined as 100 mA in USB 2.0, and 150 mA in USB 3.0. A device may draw a maximum of 5 unit loads (500 mA) from a port in USB 2.0; 6 (900 mA) in USB 3.0. NOTE: The USB 2.0 interface can provide power to low-power peripherals but must adhere to USB specification.
Table 44. Shared requirements across all categories (continued) Temperature Specifications Maximum temperature gradient (applies to both operation and non-operation) 20°C in an hour* (36°F in an hour) and 5°C in 15 minutes (41°F in 15 minutes), 5°C in an hour* (41°F in an hour) for tape NOTE: * - Per ASHRAE thermal guidelines for tape hardware, these are not instantaneous rates of temperature change.
Table 47. Thermal restriction matrix Drive Processo Fans Configuratio r n CPU TDP Fan CPU HSK redundan TDP>150 TDP<=15 cy W 0W GPU support 8 x 3.5 Appendix A. Additional specifications 8 x 2.5 16 x 2.5 24 x 2.
Table 47. Thermal restriction matrix (continued) Appendix A. Additional specifications Drive Processo Fans Configuratio r n CPU TDP Fan CPU HSK redundan TDP>150 TDP<=15 cy W 0W GPU support GPU<=7 5W TBU suppo GPU>7 rt 5W CPU blank Fan blank Note GPU riser configurati on NOTE: GPU riser 1 and 2 not supported 8 x 3.5 + 8 x 2.
NOTE: OCP shroud are required for all drive configurations, even if the OCP card is not installed. NOTE: DIMM blanks are required for CPU TDP>185 W, but are not required for CPU TDP<=185 W. NOTE: GPU blank is required at GPU riser slot 2, when a GPU>75 W is installed at GPU riser slot 1. NOTE: HDD blanks are required for empty HDD slots. NOTE: *x5 and x7 fan count is applicable only for TBU configuration. Systems without TBU should not use x5 and x7 fan counts.
Particulate and gaseous contamination specifications The following table defines the limitations that help avoid any damages to the IT equipment and/or, or both failure from particulate and gaseous contamination. If the levels of particulate or gaseous pollution exceed the specified limitations and results in equipment damage or failure, you must rectify the environmental conditions. Remediation of environmental conditions is the responsibility of the customer. Table 49.
Table 51. 8 x 3.5-inch drive configuration Standard Operating Support (ASHRAE A2 compliant) NOTE: All options supported unless otherwise noted. ○ Broadcom OCP 3.0 QP 25G SFP28 ○ Broadcom PCIe QP 25G ○ NVIDIA CX6-LX PCIe Dual Port 25G SFP28 at slot 6 Extended ambient 40° C Operating Support (ASHRAE A3 compliant) Extended ambient 45° C Operating Support (ASHRAE A4 compliant) ● Non-Dell qualified peripheral cards and Channel devices (FW) cards not supported. ● NIC consuming power >= 25 W not supported.
Table 53. 8 x 3.5-inch x 8 x NVMe drive configuration Standard Operating Support (ASHRAE A2 compliant) 62 Extended ambient 40° C Operating Support (ASHRAE A3 compliant) Extended ambient 45° C Operating Support (ASHRAE A4 compliant) ● Two PSUs are required. System performance may be reduced in the event of a PSU failure. ● Optic cable with spec 85C is required. ● Two PSUs are required. System performance may be reduced in the event of a PSU failure. Appendix A.
12 Appendix B. Standards compliance The system conforms to the following industry standards. Table 54. Industry standard documents Standard URL for information and specifications ACPIAdvance Configuration and Power Interface Specification, v2.0c https://uefi.org/specsandtesttools Ethernet IEEE 802.3-2005 https://standards.ieee.org/ HDGHardware Design Guide Version 3.0 for Microsoft Windows Server microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/pcdesign/desguide/ serverdg.
13 Appendix C Additional resources Table 55. Additional resources Resource Description of contents Installation and Service Manual This manual, available in PDF format, provides the following information: ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● Getting Started Guide Location Dell.
14 Appendix D. Support and Deployment Services Dell EMC Global Services include a wide, customizable range of service choices to simplify the assessment, design, implementation, management and maintenance of your IT environment and to help you transition from platform to platform. Depending on your current business requirements and the level of service you want, we can provide you with factory, on-site, remote, modular and specialized services that fit your needs and budget.
OpenManage system management utilities. Post-deployment configuration assistance, testing, and product orientation services are also available. Dell EMC ProDeploy ProDeploy provides full service installation and configuration of both server hardware and system software by certified deployment engineers including set up of leading operating systems and hypervisors as well as most versions of Dell EMC SupportAssist and OpenManage system management utilities.
For more information, see Server Configuration Services. Dell EMC Residency Services Residency Services helps customers transition to new capabilities quickly with the assistance of on-site or remote Dell EMC experts whose priorities and time you control. Residency experts can provide post implementation management and knowledge transfer related to a new technology acquisition or day-to-day operational management of the IT infrastructure.
Dell EMC ProSupport Plus for Enterprise When you purchase your PowerEdge server, we recommend ProSupport Plus, our proactive and preventative support service for your business-critical systems.
Dell EMC ProSupport One for Data Center ProSupport One for Data Center offers flexible site-wide support for large and distributed data centers with more than 1,000 assets. This offering is built on standard ProSupport components that leverage our global scale but are tailored to your company's needs. While not for everyone, this service option offers a truly unique solution for Dell Technologies largest customers with the most complex environments.
Figure 22. SupportAssist model Get started at Dell.com/SupportAssist Dell EMC TechDirect Boost IT team productivity when supporting Dell EMC systems. With over 1.4 million self-dispatches processed each year, TechDirect has proven its effectiveness as a support tool. You can: ● Self-dispatch replacement parts ● Request technical support ● Integrate APIs into your help desk Or, access all your Dell EMC certification and authorization requirements.
15 Dell Financial Services (DFS) Dell Financial Services is a global provider of innovative payment and consumption solutions for hardware, software and services, allowing organizations to align and scale the cost of IT solutions with technology consumption and budget availability. DFS supports all customers, from consumers to small businesses up to the largest global corporations.
