This server tower is touted as the equivalent of the rack mounted R720. It has the same processor, memory and options for management as the R720. It does differ in the wide variety of storage options that it offers. This server is targeted at small and medium sized businesses that may are slated to have growing data needs when they have more branches or need to deploy a private cloud. In these scenarios, the server does pretty well as it is sufficiently future proofed.
Design wise, the T620 sports a huge chassis that requires two persons to carry and put it in place. Typically, it comes with redundant power supplies in the 750W range, though higher outputs can be requested. It has a side panel with a lock, which when lifted reveals a nice spacious interior. Cooling for the tower is taken care of by two large heat sink fans at the back. All of these contribute to the fact that this server is remarkably quiet and cool. It can be comfortably placed in a cabinet. It even has a fitting that allows it to be deployed in a 5U rack-mount.
The mother board has 2 sockets that are built to accommodate any one of the Xeon E5-2600 processors from Intel. With two 8-core ES-2650 chips with a speed of 2GHz, 20MB at L3 cache and turbo boost technology, this server scores 22180 on Geekbench benchmark. While this server had 64GB DDR3 RAM installed, the motherboard supports up to 768GB of RAM. This is augmented by the 24 DIMM ports that are situated on both sides of the CPUs. Upgrading the RAM can turn out to be an expensive exercise, so try to get the specifications right when you order the server.
This tower offers wide range of storage options and configurations. The disks are all positioned at the back of a snap-off bezel. If you opt for a configuration that supports 3.5 inch disks, then you would end up with 12 hot-swap bays. Smaller 2.5 inch disks will give you 32 or 16 bays depending on the configuration chosen. Each bay is has an independent RAID controller courtesy of the double PERC H710P adapters. You can order the chassis with ports for up to four Dell Express Flash PCIe SSDs. This allows the bulk of the storage to be SATA or SAS drives. By default, the motherboard comes equipped with one PERC S110 controller that supports three RAID options for just 4 SATA drives, so remember to specify the type of RAID controller that you will need. Slots are available for LAN cards, GPU accelerators, and more storage controllers.
This server supports remote management options via its in-built iDRAC 7 express controller. The current version has an update that includes Dell’s lifecycle controller option and advanced power management options. The enterprise edition of this free controller gives you a graphical remote console. A nice tool to get the server’s status at a glance is the LCD panel built in the front of the tower. It is a touch panel that gives system messages and allows you to configure some features like network settings and asset tag number at the touch of a button.
In short, this server option provided by Dell is a good option for SMB that bets on people needing deployment of private clouds. It is over powered for operations that require just simple file-print options.
Article by Guest Author:Â Teyona Dame
This is a guest post by Teyona Dame of xfinityonline, a site that offers savings and current information on xfinity, as well as xfinity.com services.