DELL PowerEdge R730XD 2U rack server E5-2650 v3 10-core 2.3GHz 16GB DDR4 3x 1TB SATA H330

Built for storage density

This Dell PowerEdge R730XD is a 2U rack server designed for organisations that need twelve 3.5-inch hot-plug drive bays in a compact form factor. It ships with a single Intel Xeon E5-2650 v3 ten-core processor at 2.3 GHz, 16 GB of DDR4 memory and three 1 TB SATA drives behind a PERC H330 RAID controller. Dual 750 W redundant power supplies and iDRAC8 remote management come standard.

Suits archive and capacity workloads

The twelve-bay chassis and RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, 50, 60 support make this system a fit for backup repositories, media archives or surveillance storage where raw capacity matters more than low-latency IOPS. Buyers who need all-flash performance, GPU-accelerated compute or a second CPU installed from day one should evaluate alternative platforms.

Deciding factor: twelve 3.5-inch hot-plug bays

The defining specification is the twelve-bay 3.5-inch hot-plug backplane paired with the H330 controller, which together determine whether the server can hold the required number of spinning drives. If the deployment calls for fewer bays, 2.5-inch flash or a different RAID feature set, a different chassis will be more appropriate.