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Dell r730 variants? (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by camber-weaver@alien.top to c/homelab@selfhosted.forum

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I'm just pushing into rackmount hardware and I've been considering picking up an r730. From what I'm reading it seems *possible* that there are a couple of variants. Maybe related to available drive bays? Any chance someone could point me to some docs or some resource on variants?

Note: I don't consider differing CPU and RAM spec within a model as variants.

thx!

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[–] MentalDV8@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Cloud Ninjas ROCK!

I have three Dell PE r730xd's. You want the r730xd. I have the 12x3.5" 730xd + 2x2.5", the 24x2.5" + 2x2.5", and the 12x3.5" + 4x3.5" + 2x2.5".

Buy v4 Xeons and RAM that matches their speed. You'll be set for years. You can run one Xeon. You can run low RAM and always add. You can have 24bays and only use six drives, it's fine. It's a homelab. :) Remember there is a great 14c low power 65W v4 out there so you can always get that.

Here are the real 730xd models

r730xd 18x1.8" + 8x3.5" front (don't waste your money)
r70xd 12x3.5" front (+ optional 2x2.5" rear) (+ optional 4x3.5" internal)
r730xd 24x2.5" front (+ optional 2x2.5" rear)
r730xd 16x2.5" front (I think) + 4x2.5" NVMe front (don't waste your money)

I have the following

a. 36x3.5" HDD (24ext) on the 12bay with 2x2.5" SSD mirrored OS for XCP-ng,

b. on the r730xd 24bay I have 24x2.5" Enterprise SSD and 24x3.5" HDD (ext) and 2x2.5" SDD mirrored OS for XCP-ng,

c. on the r730xd 16x3.5" bay I have 12 HDD and of course, 2x2.5" SSD for mirrored OS for XCP-ng.

These run 24/7, are 44c/88t, 768GB DDR4ECC, run TrueNAS Scale, and a load of VMs. They have 2x10Gbps and 2x40Gbps and 3x1Gbs NICs w/Enterprise iDRAC. They have never failed. Longest uptime is 540days but it needs updating (OS) I know. :( I really believe it can run another 540days without a boot.

Oh and I've replaced the (one) UPS on it without a single drop in service to my home datacenter. I was literally transcoding video to the NAS while I swapped a UPS. The Dell power supplies work great. Please test yours before you put load on the system if you're going to use both PS and trust a fail-over.

That's my experience. I also have a Dell PE r820 (don't waste your money) and r910 (don't waste your back, legs, and money, and power bill!), 4xHPDL360/Gen9 (Dell are better), and 4xCisco C220 (Dell are better). The r910 is powered off and "just looks good," but it's useless honestly.

[–] camber-weaver@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Thank you for all of this info. I'm planning to slowly roll out three of these servers with Proxmox as a cluster. I'm just upgrading all of the available power outlets and spec'ing UPSes now.