Dell PowerEdge R610

With the launch of its latest eleventh generation PowerEdge servers, Dell is taking the fight directly to HP’s and IBM’s doorstep as it aims to beat them firmly on value and features. In this exclusive review we bring you the very first look at Dell’s new PowerEdge R610, which introduces Intel’s new 5500 Series ‘Nehalem’ Xeons and a whole lot more besides.

The R610 has a keen eye on virtualisation, but also delivers reduced power demands and vastly improved management features with centralisation high on the agenda. The new servers also have a Lifecycle Controller, which provides features such as recording firmware versions, build level audits and options to transplant the local server’s settings to others.

Storage capacity goes up to six SFF hard disks and the hot-swap carriers look more sturdy as the release levers are now metal instead of plastic. RAID is provided by Dell’s PERC 6/I, which came kitted out with 256MB of embedded cache and a battery backup unit along with support for stripes, mirrors, RAID-5 and hot-sparing.

The lid is easily removed and what lies beneath looks very interesting. At the front is the active hard disk backplane and on top of the optical drive is a small board with an SD memory slot. This came populated with a 1GB SD card and is specifically for embedded hypervisors as it’s a bootable device. VMware’s ESXi is currently supported, but Dell advised that others are on the way soon.

The motherboard is very tidily laid out with the pair of 2.4GHz E5530 Xeons located at the front and topped off with solid passive heatsinks. Alongside each processor socket are banks of six DIMM sockets and Dell provided a total of 12GB of DDR3 UDIMM modules.

Internal design pays particular attention to cooling with a reduced fan requirement so this is now handled by a bank of six small dual-rotor fan modules. We were amazed at how quiet the R610 was during testing as we had to turn off most of the other systems in the lab before we could even hear it.

Processors

Up to two Quad-Core or Dual-Core Intel^® Xeon^® 5500 series processors

Chipset

Intel^TM 5520 (Tylersberg)

Memory

Up to 96GB⁴ (12 DIMM slots/6 per-processor): 1GB/2GB/4GB/8GB DDR3 800MHz, 1066MHz or 1333MHz

Supported OS

Microsoft Windows^® Server 2003

Novell^® SUSE^® Linux Enterprise Server 11

Red Hat^® Enterprise Linux 4.7

Red Hat^® Enterprise Linux 5.3

Sun^® Solaris^TM 10

Linux

Storage (optional include)

SAS, Near-line SAS, SSD

2.5″ SAS (15K RPM): 73GB⁵

2.5″ SAS (10k RPM): 73GB⁵

2.5″ Enterprise SSD: 25GB⁵, 50GB⁵

Power Supplies

Two hot plug high efficient 502w PSU (Energy Smart) or

Two hot-plug 717W PSUs (High Output)

Availability

Hot-plug hard drives, hot-plug redundant power, redundant cooling, ECC memory, Single Device Data Correction (SDDC), supports memory demand, patrol scrubbing and high availability failover cluster

Graphics

Integrated Matrox G200, 8 MB shared video memory

ChassisR610 Rack

Height: 4.26cm (1.68”)

Width: 48.24cm (18.99”) (includes rack latches)

Depth: 77.2cm (30.39”) (includes PSU handles and bezel)

Weight (maximum config): 17.69Kgs (39lbs)

Management

Dell OpenManage featuring Dell Management Console

Lifecycle Controller

Fans

Standard redundant cooling

Acoustics

Typically configured⁶ 2.5” chassis in 23 ± 2 C ambient

Idle: LwA-UL⁷ = 5.3 bels, LpAm⁸ = 35 dBA

Rack SupportSliding ReadyRails^TM for 4-post Racks:

Support tool-less installation in 19” EIA-310-E compliant square or unthreaded round hole 4-post racks including all Dell 42xx & 24xx racks

NOTE: Threaded 4-post racks require the static ReadyRails^TM kit or 3^rd party conversion kits available through Dell Software & Peripherals

Support full extension of the system out of the rack to allow serviceability of key internal components

Support optional cable management arm (CMA) except on Dell 4200 & 2400 racks and 3^rd party racks that are less than 1m in depth

Rail depth without the CMA: 798 mm (with outer CMA brackets attached), 768 mm (with outer CMA brackets removed)

Rail depth with the CMA: 887 mm

Square-hole rack adjustment range: 692-756 mm

Round-hole rack adjustment range: 678-749 mm

Static ReadyRails^TM for 4-post & 2-post Racks:

Support tool-less installation in 19” EIA-310-E compliant square or unthreaded round hole 4-post racks including all Dell 42xx & 24xx racks

Support tooled installation in 19” EIA-310-E compliant threaded hole 4-post and 2-post racks

Rail depth: 608 mm

Square-hole rack adjustment range: 588-828 mm

Round-hole rack adjustment range: 574-821 mm

Threaded-hole rack adjustment range: 592-846 mm