DELL PowerEdge R740xd 2U 24-bay 2.5" rack server 2x Xeon Platinum 8160 2.1GHz 768GB DDR4 24x 1.2TB SAS H730P

Storage density and compute

This Dell PowerEdge R740xd 2U rack server combines 24 front-accessible 2.5-inch drive bays with dual Xeon Platinum 8160 processors. Each CPU provides 24 cores at 2.1 GHz with a 3.7 GHz turbo frequency. The system includes 768 GB of DDR4 2666 MHz registered ECC memory across 24 DIMM slots and a PERC H730P 2 GB controller supporting RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50 and 60. Twenty-four 1.2 TB 10K SAS drives are installed.

Suitable workloads and limits

The configuration suits software-defined storage clusters, virtual desktop infrastructure and service-provider platforms that need high drive count in a 2U form factor. Quad-port networking with two 1 GbE and two 10 Gb SFP+ links is provided by an Intel X520/I350 daughter card. Remote management uses iDRAC 9 Enterprise. Buyers who need more than two sockets, GPU accelerator space or memory beyond the 3 TB maximum should evaluate other platforms.

Deciding specification

The 24-bay 2.5-inch SAS chassis with the H730P controller determines whether this server matches a given storage topology. The installed 1.2 TB 10K drives deliver a fixed raw capacity and the controller sets the available RAID levels. Memory expansion is possible up to 3 TB using the remaining DDR4 slots.