DELL PowerEdge R540 2U Rack Server 2x Xeon Gold 5118 2.3GHz 12-Core 256GB DDR4 8x 4TB SAS H740P

Dell PowerEdge R540 2U rack server

The Dell PowerEdge R540 is a 2U rack server equipped with two Intel Xeon Gold 5118 12-core processors running at 2.30 GHz with a 3.2 GHz turbo frequency. It includes 256 GB of DDR4 2666 MHz registered ECC memory across eight 32 GB modules and a Dell PERC H740P storage controller with 8 GB cache. Eight 4 TB 7.2K SAS hard drives are installed in the 3.5-inch drive bays. Dual 750 W redundant power supplies and iDRAC9 Enterprise remote management complete the configuration.

Who this suits and who should look elsewhere

This server suits organisations that need a balanced mix of compute cores, memory capacity and high-density SAS storage in a 2U form factor. The dual-socket design and 16 DIMM slots allow memory expansion up to 1 TB for growing virtualisation or database workloads. Buyers who require more than two processor sockets, faster flash-based storage tiers or GPU-accelerated compute density should evaluate alternative platforms.

The specification that decides fit

The eight installed 4 TB 7.2K SAS drives provide 32 TB of raw capacity behind the PERC H740P controller, which supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50 and 60. If the workload demands more spindles than the eight 3.5-inch bays can hold, or needs an all-flash array, this chassis cannot satisfy that requirement without external enclosures.