Lenovo ThinkSystem

Lenovo ThinkSystem is the server family Lenovo launched in 2017 with the move to the Xeon Scalable platform. On the refurbished market the SR630 and SR650 matter most: two dual-socket rack servers, 1U and 2U. Below: where the line comes from, how the model names work, how to tell the generations apart and what XClarity actually is.

From IBM System x to ThinkSystem

In 2014 Lenovo took over IBM's x86 server business. The System x models carried on at first, such as the x3550 M5 (1U) and x3650 M5 (2U) with Xeon E5 v3/v4. Xeon Scalable brought the relaunch as ThinkSystem in 2017: the SR630 succeeded the x3550, the SR650 the x3650. Two things survived from the IBM days: light path diagnostics, where LEDs point to the failed component, and licence keys based on Features on Demand. Drive caddies and many options, on the other hand, don't carry over between System x and ThinkSystem.

The naming scheme: SR630, SR650 and the V generations

• S stands for server, the second letter for the form factor: R for rack, T for tower (such as the ST550), D for dense multi-node systems (such as the SD530).
• First digit – the class: 2 and 5 are entry and value models, 6 the mainstream dual-socket class, 8 and 9 systems with four or more sockets (SR850, SR950).
• Within the 600 class, the SR630 is the 1U and the SR650 the 2U server; the SR670 is built for GPUs.
• Last digit – the processor: 0 stands for Intel, 5 for AMD EPYC, such as the single-socket SR635 and SR655 or the dual-socket SR645 and SR665.
• V2 or V3 suffix: a plain SR650 runs 1st or 2nd gen Xeon Scalable, the SR650 V2 the 3rd, and the SR650 V3 the 4th and 5th gen.