DELL PowerEdge R540 2U rack server 2x Xeon Silver 4114 2.2GHz 10-core 64GB DDR4 8x 4TB SAS H740P

Dual-socket Xeon server for virtualization

The PowerEdge R540 ships with two Xeon Silver 4114 processors, each running ten cores at 2.2 GHz with a 3.0 GHz turbo. Sixty-four gigabytes of DDR4 2666 MHz registered ECC memory populate four of sixteen slots, leaving room to reach the one-terabyte ceiling. The 2U rack chassis holds eight 3.5-inch drive bays and includes sliding rails plus a front bezel.

PERC H740P controller with battery-backed cache

The H740P adds eight gigabytes of non-volatile cache and supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50 and 60 plus pass-through mode. Eight enterprise 4 TB SAS drives spinning at 7.2 K rpm are pre-installed, delivering thirty-two terabytes of raw capacity on a twelve-gigabit SAS backbone. Dual 750 W platinum power supplies and the iDRAC 9 Enterprise module provide redundant power and full out-of-band management respectively.

Twelve-gigabit SAS limits drive speed and topology

The SAS 12 Gb/s interface caps each drive at its native 7.2 K rpm throughput; faster SSD tiers would require a different backplane. Only two one-gigabit RJ45 ports are fitted on the integrated network daughter card, so high-bandwidth clustering needs an add-in NIC. The board maxes out at two processors and sixteen DIMM slots, so further CPU or memory growth demands a new platform.