DELL PowerEdge R740xd2 2U 26 Bay 2x Xeon Gold 6154 18C 3.0GHz 32GB DDR4 26x 8TB SAS HBA330 iDRAC9 2x 1100W

Dense 2U storage server

The Dell PowerEdge R740xd2 packs twenty-six 3.5-inch drive bays into a 2U rackmount chassis. Dual Intel Xeon Gold 6154 processors deliver eighteen cores each at 3.0 GHz with 3.7 GHz turbo. Thirty-two gigabytes of DDR4-2666 ECC memory occupies four of sixteen slots. The PERC HBA330 controller manages the installed drives.

Upgrade from direct-attached arrays

This system replaces scattered JBOD enclosures or older 2U platforms that max out at twelve or sixteen bays. The jump is worth it when a single rack unit must serve both compute and high-capacity SAS storage. Workloads that outgrow the two-socket limit or need more than one terabyte of memory will require a larger platform.

SAS 12 Gb/s interface ceiling

The HBA330 connects drives at twelve gigabits per second over SAS, capping sequential throughput per drive at the 7.2 K rpm mechanical limit. The OCP 2.0 mezzanine card adds dual 10/25 Gb SFP28 ports for network uplinks. PCIe expansion slots remain available for additional controllers, but the two-processor maximum fixes the CPU ceiling.