DELL PowerEdge R540 12-bay 2U rack server 2x Xeon Gold 6130 2.1GHz 16GB 12x 4TB H730P

Dell PowerEdge R540 12-bay 2U server

The Dell PowerEdge R540 is a 2U rack server built for growing business environments. It ships with two Intel Xeon Gold 6130 processors running at 2.1 GHz with 3.7 GHz turbo across 16 cores each. Sixteen gigabytes of DDR4-2666 ECC registered memory and twelve 3.5-inch 4 TB 7.2K SATA drives are installed. A PERC H730P controller with 2 GB cache manages RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50 and 60 plus pass-through. Dual 750 W platinum power supplies and iDRAC 9 Express remote management complete the package.

Suits virtualisation and storage-heavy workloads

This configuration targets organisations running virtualisation, databases or software-defined storage that benefit from high drive count and hardware RAID. The twelve-bay chassis and dual-socket design provide room for memory and storage expansion. Buyers needing more than sixteen gigabytes of memory or faster drive interfaces than 6 Gb/s SATA should evaluate other platforms. The server also lacks a front bezel and ready rails, so rack-mounting hardware must be sourced separately.

PERC H730P RAID controller with 2 GB cache

The PERC H730P is the single component that defines the storage capabilities of this system. It delivers 12 Gb/s SAS and SATA connectivity with battery-backed write cache and supports RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50 and 60 plus pass-through mode. All twelve 4 TB drives connect through this controller, so its feature set determines available redundancy, performance and capacity options. Verify that the supported RAID levels match your data-protection requirements before deployment.