IT Pro Verdict
As a general-purpose 2U rack server, the PowerEdge R720 looks capable of running any application that can be thrown at it. Its massive memory capacity and hypervisor redundancy make it ideal for virtualisation, while the storage capacity, expansion potential and remote management are excellent. Plus, of course, it supports Intel’s very latest Xeon E5-2600 processors.
With the launch of its twelfth generation of PowerEdge servers, Dell takes an early lead over HP and IBM by being the first to deliver a production server with Intel's new Xeon E5-2600 processors. In this exclusive review we look at the new PowerEdge R720, which sees a complete redesign over the R710.
Storage potential sees huge improvements, as this 2U chassis has room for up eight hot-swap LFF or sixteen SFF hard disks twice that of the R710. Dell also uniquely offers a version with four standard SSF bays and four hot-plug PCI-e Express Flash SSDs.
Dell also offers the R720xd (extreme disk') version that uses a different chassis. Available as a separate order, it has been modified to provide 24 hot-swap SFF bays at the front and two more at the back.
The system on review came equipped with a pair of 2.7GHz Intel Xeon E5-2680 processors. These use the new 32nm Sandy-Bridge-EP' (efficient performance) architecture that sees inter-socket QPI links doubled and their speeds boosted to 8GT/s (gigatransfers per second).
The E5-2680 is near the top of this group of 8-core server CPUs, with its large 20MB L3 cache and support for Intel's new Turbo Boost 2.0. The latter allows cores to be speeded up briefly beyond their TDP rating. During idle periods, the system accumulates a thermal budget and in times of increased activity, this is used to boost core performance for up to 25 seconds.
The server's excellent internal design has allowed Dell to pack in an impressive range of features.
The E5-2600 Xeons have four memory channels per socket and the R720 has the full 24 DIMM slots onboard. Memory can be boosted up to a massive 768GB in dual-CPU systems using 32GB RDIMMs, or the new LR-DIMM (Load Reduced) modules.
