IBM System x3250 M5 1
I B M  ®
IBM System x3250 M5
IBM Redbooks Product Guide
The IBM® System x3250 M5 single-socket 1U rack server is designed for small businesses and first-time 
server buyers looking for a solution to improve business efficiency. It delivers several IBM innovative 
features in a compact 1U form factor with a competitive price. The IBM System x3250 M5 provides 
next-generation performance in an innovative and compact design with flexible configuration options, 
built-in security, and systems management capabilities, as described in the IBM Redbooks® Product 
Guide. It leverages the next-generation quad-core Intel Xeon processor E3-1200 v3 product family 
technology.
Suggested use
: Small-to-medium businesses looking for file and printer servers, web serving, and small 
business infrastructure.
The following figure shows the IBM System x3250 M5.
Figure 1. The IBM System x3250 M5 
Did you know
The x3250 M5 offers a flexible and scalable design and a simple upgrade path to eight HDDs plus an 
optical drive at the same time. The flexible onboard Ethernet solution provides two standard integrated 
Gigabit Ethernet ports and two additional integrated Gigabit Ethernet ports with an optional software 
feature for an on-demand upgrade without a need to buy additional hardware. Comprehensive systems 
management tools with the next-generation Integrated Management Module II (IMM2) make it easy to 
deploy, integrate, service, and manage.
The x3250 M5 includes features not typically seen in this class of system, such as standard RAID-0, 1, 
and 10 with the ServeRAID C100 for simple-swap SATA models, remote control capabilities even when 
the machine is powered off, and basic light path diagnostics on processor, memory, and hard drives. This 
flexible 1U rack-mountable server is also highly upgradable and expandable, scaling from low-cost, 
fixed-function models to feature-rich, highly available models.