Storage; Internal Storage - Dell External OEMR XL R720XD Technical Manual

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 R720 and R720xd Technical Guide
25
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
8 x 3.5" drives
24 x 2.5" drives (front) +
2 x 2.5" drives (back)
12 x 3.5" drives (front) +
2 x 2.5" drives (back)
1
Available Q2 2012
2
Back-accessible 2.5" drives are optional
1
drives
2
2