New chassis for Dell rack server

Rack-mount servers are a great invention but, by their very nature, suffer from a lack of space. Even with the advent of 2.5in disks they’re still limited when it comes to internal storage - a problem Dell is looking to address on its PowerEdge R510 with the introduction of new chassis that shoe-horns twelve hard disks into a 2U slot.

The thinking here is easy enough to understand. In corporate data centres, storage isn’t an issue as rack servers are routinely attached to external or SAN storage. Smaller companies, however, may not be able to afford such luxuries. Likewise when it comes to branch office networks, external storage may be considered too expensive and/or too complex to deploy.

For such customers the PowerEdge R510 with its dual Xeon 5500 processors is an ideal buy, especially with the addition of the 12-bay chassis to the existing 4-bay and 8-bay models. Disks can be either 3.5inch or 2.5inch, there’s the usual choice of SATA or SAS technologies, disks can be hot swapped and the drive bays all at the front in three rows of four. Unfortunately there’s no room left for a CD/DVD drive, but that’s unlikely to be a major issue. Neither will cost. Prices have yet to be announced but the new chassis is unlikely to have a major impact on the bottom line.

Alan Stevens