The Dell™ PowerEdge™ R720 and R720xd provide storage expandability that allows you to adapt to your workload and operational demands. With comprehensive storage options, the R720 and
R720xd offer various drive types, internal and external storage controllers, and different chassis and backplanes for varied numbers of drives.
Due to their massive internal storage capacities, the R720 and R720xd are optimized for a variety of implementations, including virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environments and collaboration solutions. The R720 supports up to 16 and the R720xd supports up to 26 internal 2.5-inch drives.
Features such as Express Flash PCIe solid-state drives (available Q2 2012) and CacheCade™ provide vastly accelerated performance over previous technologies. Dell Express Flash drives use PCIe lanes to connect directly to the processor and chipset and are easily accessible by hot-plug drive bay.
CacheCade uses Dell PERC storage controllers to accelerate performance over hard drives or traditional solid-state drives.
The R720 and R720xd are available in several hot-plug, hard-drive chassis options, as detailed in
Table 11. Note that the chassis option must be selected at the point of purchase and cannot be
changed or upgraded later.
PowerEdge server Chassis option
16 x 2.5” drives
8 x 2.5” + 8 x 2.5” drives
(with dual RAID controllers)
8 x 2.5” drives
8 x 2.5” + 4 x Express Flash 1 drives
8 x 3.5” drives
24 x 2.5” drives (front) +
2 x 2.5” drives (back) 2
12 x 3.5” drives (front) +
2 x 2.5” drives (back) 2
1
Available Q2 2012
2
Back-accessible 2.5” drives are optional
25 PowerEdge R720 and R720xd Technical Guide
Table 12 lists the internal hard drives supported by the R720 and R720xd. For the latest information
on supported hard drives, visit Dell.com
.
Form
factor
Type
SATA (3Gb)
Speed
(rpm)
7.2K
Capacities
250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB
3.5” Nearline SAS (6Gb) 7.2K 1TB, 2TB, 3TB
SAS (6Gb)
SATA (3Gb)
Nearline SAS (6Gb)
SAS (6Gb)
SAS (6Gb)
10K
15K 2.5”
SAS SSD (SLC, 6Gb) N/A
SATA SSD (MLC,
3Gb)
Express Flash
PCIe SSD (SLC) 1
1
Available Q2 2012
N/A
N/A
15K
7.2K
7.2K
300GB, 600GB
250GB, 500GB, 1TB
500GB, 1TB, 1TB (SED)
300GB, 600GB, 900GB, 900GB
(SED)
146GB, 300GB, 300GB (SED)
200GB, 400GB
100GB, 200GB
175GB, 350GB
Express Flash drives use PCIe and SSD technologies to provide performance, scalability, and optimal serviceability. Accelerated performance with high IOPs is made possible without requiring processor resources or capturing DRAM. Also, Express Flash drives use a standardized, 2.5-inch hot-plug form factor, which saves critical PCIe slot space by moving drives from the back to the front of the system and allows a common management process for all drives.
The PowerEdge R720 has an option to support up to four hot-plug Express Flash PCIe SSD drives
(available Q2 2012) in the 2.5-inch chassis.
The R720xd does not support Express Flash drives.
26 PowerEdge R720 and R720xd Technical Guide
