Dell PowerEdge R750 Server

The Dell PowerEdge R750 server is a fantastic storage solution in Dell’s 15th generation of servers. This 2U rackmount server supports a large amount of drives and has a ton of NVMe support. The R750 has many different chassis options. The differences between the different chassis configurations have to do with the drive bays, NVMe support, chassis rear, and number of PCIe slots.

Bay Counts and NVMe Capable Backplanes

There is a total of four different bay count and form factors options for the PowerEdge R750. These options are 8 Bay SFF, 16 Bay SFF, 24 Bay SFF, and 12 Bay LFF. The 8 Bay SFF chassis accepts a total of eight 2.5” SAS and/or SATA drives. The backplane for this chassis does not support NVMe drives. The 16 Bay SFF chassis accepts a total of sixteen 2.5” SAS and/or SATA drives, and does not have NVMe support on the backplane. The 24 Bay SFF chassis accepts twenty-four 2.5” drives. There are two versions of the 24 Bay SFF chassis that have different NVMe support. The first version has sixteen non-NVMe bays and eight NVMe bays on the backplane. The second version supports NVMe in all twenty-four drive bays. Lastly, for the 12 Bay LFF chassis, you can put in a total of twelve 3.5in SAS and/or SATA drives. This chassis does not support NVMe.

Chassis Rear and PCIe Slots

There are three rear configuration options with the R750 server. The first configuration has two 2.5” drive bays, two low-profile gen 4 PCIe slots, four full-height gen 4 PCIe slots, and a hot-plug BOSS card. The second configuration has no rear drive bays, two low-profile gen 4 PCIe slots, six full-height gen 4 PCIe slots, and a hot-plug BOSS card. The last rear configuration consist of four 2.5” drive bays, two low-profile gen 4 PCIe slots, two full-height gen 4 PCIe slots, and a hot-plug BOSS card.

The Dell PowerEdge R750 is a dual socket system that accepts a total of two 3rd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs. With this family of processors, the maximum cores you can get per processor is 40, meaning that you can put a total of 80 CPU cores into the R750. This is fantastic for intense virtualization applications.

The Dell PowerEdge R750 server has a wide selection of supported storage options. The form factor of the server’s chassis will determine the size of drive you can install. A small form factor system accepts 2.5” drives while a larger form factor system accepts 3.5”. The bay count of the chassis, as well as if it comes with a rear drive kit, will determine how many drives you can install. Depending on what chassis you have, you can install HDD, SSD, M.2, and uSD drives. The supported drive interfaces for the R750 are SATA, SAS, and NVMe.

Supported Drives

NVMe is an amazing technology that is heavily in demand, NVMe drives are generally must faster, than non-NVMe drives. NVMe brings huge performance benefits to any system that utilizes it. The Dell PowerEdge R750 server has lots of support for NVMe.

U.2 NVMe and Backplane NVMe

Some systems do not have NVMe capable backplanes and to get around this you can use a U.2 NVMe enablement kit. The issue with this is that it is not supported by every system. Luckily, depending on what R750 chassis you have, the backplane will support NVMe out of the box. There are two versions of the 24 Bay SFF chassis that supports NVMe. For the first version, all 24 drive bays have NVMe capabilities. For the second version, only the last 8 bays support NVMe drives.

M.2 NVMe

With the BOSS-S2 controller card in the back of the R750, you can install a total of two M.2 NVMe drives. The BOSS-S1 can be used as well with this server. One big advantage that the BOSS-S2 has over the BOSS-S1 is that the BOSS-S2 supports hot-swap. This good for if an M.2 drive fails, you can replace it without powering off your server. Both the BOSS-S1 and BOSS-S2 support hardware RAID.

How Many Power Supplies does the R750 Take?

The Dell PowerEdge R750 server can hold a total of two hot-swap power supplies. Hot-swap means that a power supply unit can be added or removed while the system is powered on. One power supply must remain within the system to keep the server running.

Wattage Options

There is a total of four different power supply options. These options are 800W, 1100W, 1400W, and 2400W. Each of these are great options, but if your application requires a great amount of power, using a high wattage PSU is the best option. Another thing to consider is the number of power supplies that you install into your server. If you’re server cannot afford to be powered down, then installing two power supplies is your best bet. Having two power supplies provides protection if one of your power supplies fail.

Voltage

All power supplies options for the PowerEdge R750 are mixed mode, meaning that they support a greater voltage range. Mixed voltage power supplies range from 100V to 240W. Mixed mode power supplies will automatically adjust depending on the voltage.

Power Supply Placement

The power supplies are located in the rear of the chassis. The R740 has the power supplies on only one side of the chassis. For the R750, there is a power supply on each side of the server. This is to improve the cooling and airflow of the server.

To connect a computer or server to the internet, it needs some type of Network Interface Card (NIC). The Dell PowerEdge R750 has tons of options for network cards. There are cards with either RJ45 and fiber connections. The R750 no longer supports Network Daughter Cards (NDC) and only supports OCP and PCIe network cards.