DELL PowerEdge R730XD 2U rack server E5-2650 v3 10C 2.3GHz 8GB DDR4 3×2TB SAS H330

Purpose-built storage server

The Dell PowerEdge R730XD is a 2U rack server designed for dense storage workloads. It ships with a single Intel Xeon E5-2650 v3 ten-core processor running at 2.3 GHz and 8 GB of DDR4 memory. Three 2 TB 7.2K SAS drives and a PERC H330 RAID controller provide immediate capacity with support for RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, 50 and 60. Dual 750 W redundant power supplies and 12 hot-plug 3.5-inch drive bays complete the platform.

Fit and alternatives

This server suits teams that need a high-bay-count chassis for SAS or SATA hard drives with hardware RAID and room to grow memory across 24 DIMM slots. Buyers who require solid-state boot devices, more than one processor, or a larger initial memory allocation should look at a different specification. The single-CPU configuration also limits the maximum memory to 8 GB until a second processor is added.

Deciding specification

The defining constraint is the twelve 3.5-inch hot-plug drive bays paired with the H330 controller supporting SAS and SATA media. This bay count and controller combination determines whether the chassis can hold the required raw capacity and RAID topology for the target workload.