Dell EMC PowerEdge T640
A versatile server with all the power a small business needs – and massive expandability for the future
SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £1,923 exc VAT from dell.co.uk
Dell EMC’s PowerEdge T640 costs more or less the same as this month’s other servers, but it’s designed with an eye on greater things. For a start, it supports every Xeon Scalable CPU on the books – all the way up to the Platinum 8180, with its 28 cores and huge 205W TDP.
It also offers huge storage capacity. Its 5U width affords room for up to four drive cages, which (with the addition of an extra backplane) can be packed with up to 18 regular 3.5in drives or 32 SFF drives. For maximum storage performance, the 16-bay SFF model can also be combined with up to eight PCI-E NVMe SSDs. These fit into a dedicated cage in the upper half of the front panel, cabled through to a pair of PCI-E bridge cards.
Whatever disk configuration you choose, Dell EMC’s BOSS (bootoptimised storage solution) PCI-E card helps you make the most of it by running the OS from a separate pair of mirrored M.2 SSDs; this costs around £477 with two 240GB drives.
For standard SATA drives, the embedded PERC S140 drive controller may be all you need, with its support for stripes, mirrors and RAID5 arrays. Our test system, however, came with a PERC H740P card, which brings 12Gbits/sec SAS3 into play and includes 8GB of NVRAM cache, plus an integrated battery backup.
And when you want to add more drives, you’ll appreciate the T640’s spacious interior. The RAID card is tucked away at the top of the motherboard, and there’s a slot above this for a dual SD card controller which adds hypervisor redundancy with hardware mirroring.
In the centre of the motherboard sit a pair of CPU sockets; the price includes a single 2.1GHz Xeon Silver 4110 CPU, but you can easily slot in a second one in the future to gain a big boost in processing power. Similarly, our test system came with 16GB of DDR4, but with 24 DIMM sockets you can push this up to a maximum of 1.5TB with dual CPUs – or all the way up to 3TB if you splash out on high-end Gold or Platinum CPUs.
Our T640 spec only required two fan modules, fitted at the rear of the motherboard shroud, but if you
“The price includes a single 2.1GHz Xeon Silver 4110 CPU, but you can easily slot in a second one in the future for a big processing boost”
choose to add a second CPU or max out the hard disks you’ll need to invest in the additional four-fan module, which slips in behind the backplane.
Round the back, dual 10GBase-T ports come as standard, and eight PCI-E slots give you loads of room for additional network cards. The platform can handle up to four GPU accelerator cards too, for virtual desktop infrastructure deployments, although these are only supported in the rackmount version.
A final plus is manageability: Dell’s iDRAC9 controller presents a wealth of data about all the critical hardware, in a slick HTML5 web interface. The System Lockdown mode prevents unauthorised users fiddling with the configuration, and firmware updates are cryptographically signed for extra security.
We also love the server’s Quick Sync 2 feature: tapping a button on the front activates Bluetooth, which let us connect our iPad directly to the server via the OpenManage Mobile (OMM) iOS app. After scanning the QR code on the system label, we instantly had access to all sorts of server information, alerts and health status, while standing right in front of the server. The PowerEdge T640 is one of the most versatile towers we’ve seen. It’s priced right for SMEs seeking a first server, yet offers vast expansion potential. Factor in Dell’s exemplary management features and it’s just the ticket for a fast-growing business.
SPECIFICATIONS 2.1GHz Xeon Silver 4110 processor (max 2) 16GB 2,400MHz DDR4 (max 3TB) Dell PERC H740P SAS3 RAID/8GB NVRAM cache/BBU supports RAID0, 1, 10, 5, 6, 50, 60 16-bay SFF drive cage 1,300GB 15K SAS3 SFF hard disk (max 32) dual 10GBase-T 8 x PCI-Express 3 495W hot-plug PSU (max 2) iDRAC9 Enterprise with Gigabit Ethernet 220 x 715 x 443mm (WDH) max 205W TDP 3yr on-site NBD warranty