DELL PowerEdge R730 2U Rack Server 2x Xeon E5-2660 v4 2.0GHz 14 Core 128GB DDR4 8x 2.4TB SAS H730

Dual 14-core Xeon server for virtualisation

The PowerEdge R730 is a 2U rack server built around two Intel Xeon E5-2660 v4 processors. Each CPU runs at 2.0 GHz with a 3.2 GHz turbo frequency and provides 14 cores, giving 28 cores total. The system ships with 128 GB of DDR4 registered ECC memory across eight 16 GB modules and leaves 16 DIMM slots free for expansion up to 1.5 TB. It targets midsize and large enterprises running virtual desktop infrastructure, databases, data warehousing or high-performance computing nodes.

Upgrade from single-socket or lower-core systems

Moving from a single-processor box or a dual-socket platform with fewer than 14 cores per CPU adds parallel threads for heavier virtualisation density and database concurrency. The jump is worthwhile when workloads exceed the thread count or memory bandwidth of the current host and the application scales across NUMA nodes. The PERC H730 controller supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50 and 60 plus pass-through mode, so existing SAS or SATA arrays can be migrated without reformatting.

Tool-less rails and hot-swap bays simplify

The chassis includes ready rails for tool-less rack mounting and eight hot-swap 2.5-inch drive bays that accept the supplied 2.4 TB 10 K SAS drives. Dual 750 W platinum power supplies and redundant fans are hot-swappable, reducing downtime during maintenance. Common pitfalls include forgetting to update iDRAC 8 Enterprise firmware before first boot, mixing memory ranks across channels which limits speed to 2400 MHz, and not licensing the PERC H730 battery-backed cache for write-back acceleration.