DELL PowerEdge R730xd 12 Bay 3.5" 2U Rack Server 2x Xeon E5-2699 v3 2.3GHz 18 Core 512GB DDR4 H730 12x 6TB HDD

Dense storage server

This 2U rack system combines twelve 3.5-inch drive bays with dual 18-core Xeon processors and 512 GB of DDR4 ECC memory. The PERC H730 controller supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50 and 60 plus pass-through mode. Quad-port networking provides two 1 GbE and two 10 Gb SFP+ links. iDRAC 8 Enterprise enables full remote management.

Upgrade from smaller arrays

The twelve-bay chassis replaces 8-bay or 4-bay servers when raw capacity and throughput must grow without adding rack units. Dual CPUs and 1.5 TB maximum memory let the platform absorb heavier virtualisation or database loads. The jump is worth it when workloads saturate both drive slots and compute threads on a lesser box.

Rail installation caveats

Ready Rails mount in standard square-hole or round-hole racks, but the 2U depth demands clearance behind the rear cable management arm. Dual 750 W platinum supplies require two PDU circuits for full redundancy. Memory population follows strict DDR4 rank rules; mixing DIMM sizes across the 24 slots can prevent the system from posting.