Dell PowerEdge R740xd 24-Bay NVME
Configure Your System:
1 Processor Required
Step 1: Choose a series
Both generations drop into the same R740xd motherboard, so this is a price and features decision, not a compatibility one.
Intel Xeon Gen 1 (Skylake-SP, 4100/5100/6100/8100 series) is the value play. Mature, plentiful, and the best price per core in the lineup. Memory tops out at 2666 MT/s.
Intel Xeon Gen 2 (Cascade Lake-SP, 4200/5200/6200/8200 series) adds higher clocks per tier, 2933 MT/s memory support on Gold 6200 SKUs, and Optane PMem support on L-series parts. Worth the premium when per-core performance is load-bearing; otherwise Gen 1 does the same job for less.
Whichever series you pick, populate both sockets. A single-CPU R740xd loses half its memory channels, half its DIMM slots, and the PCIe slots that route through the second CPU, and a storage node needs those lanes for controllers and networking.
Step 2: Choose your CPU
A storage-first chassis does not need top-bin compute, but do not starve it either: vSAN, Ceph, and Storage Spaces Direct all burn real CPU cycles on checksums, erasure coding, and rebuilds.
Running Windows Server 2022 or 2025? Two 8-core Gold CPUs land exactly on the 16-core base license. Our pick is the Gold 6134 (8 cores, 3.2 GHz, 130W): high clocks per core, which Windows and Storage Spaces workloads reward.
Building a software-defined storage node on vSphere, Proxmox, or Ceph? The Gold 6230 (20 cores, 2.1 GHz, 125W) is the balanced default, and VMware's 16-core-per-socket license minimum makes the 8-core strategy pointless there anyway.
Silver covers backup targets and archive nodes where the drives do the work. Platinum rarely belongs in this chassis; if the workload needs that much compute, the storage probably belongs on a SAN.
Fair warning on any CPU above 150W: the high-performance heatsink and fan kit are required, not optional. Confirm they are in your build before checkout.
2 Heat Sink Optional
Standard heatsink covers CPUs up to 150W TDP in a straightforward front-bay configuration in a normal datacenter environment.
High-performance heatsink is required above 150W, and we also spec it on lower-wattage CPUs whenever the build includes mid-bay drives. The R740xd's internal drive trays sit directly in the airflow path between the fans and the CPUs, and a fully loaded chassis makes the processors work harder for their cooling. Dell's thermal restriction tables get strict on this platform for exactly that reason.
The practical rule: light front-bay build with mainstream CPUs, standard heatsink is fine. Loaded storage configuration or anything above 150W, take the high-performance kit. On a chassis you bought specifically to fill with drives, plan on the second case. The cost difference is small and it is a lot cheaper than a thermal event.
3 Memory (RAM) 24 DIMM slots, modules added in sets of 2 Required
There are two benefits. The first is performance: full population at 2 DPC keeps all twelve memory channels working at maximum depth, and on memory-bandwidth-sensitive workloads it consistently outperforms a partial population running at higher clock. On a storage node the memory is not idle either; vSAN, Ceph, ZFS, and Storage Spaces Direct all lean on RAM for caching and metadata, and every one of them performs better with room to breathe. The second is cost per gigabyte: 24 smaller modules hit the same capacity for meaningfully less than 12 larger ones, and 768 GB as 24× 32 GB is the best cost per GB in the lineup.
We know the instinct is to leave a few slots open for a later upgrade, and on paper that is sensible. In practice it rarely plays out well. One year from now you are hunting for DIMMs that match the rank and speed of what is already in the box, and a mismatch either clocks the whole server down or refuses to train. The server is in production by then, so adding memory means a maintenance window you have to schedule and justify.
Buy the capacity now, in one matched set.
384 GB (24× 16 GB) for a backup target or archive node where storage, not compute, is the job
768 GB (24× 32 GB) is our default for a vSAN, Ceph, or Storage Spaces Direct node, and for any host mixing storage with real VM duty
1.5 TB (24× 64 GB) for dense consolidation on top of the storage role
Past 1.5 TB you are into 128 GB LRDIMMs, which reach 3 TB but cost substantially more per GB. Most buyers are better served by a second node.
4 RAID Controllers Optional
Redundancy for NVMe happens in software, and on a 24-bay all-flash node that is a feature, not a compromise: this chassis is one of the classic vSAN and Ceph building blocks, and those stacks want direct drive access anyway. Storage Spaces Direct, ZFS, and Linux mdadm handle NVMe pools well, and database platforms like SQL Server AlwaysOn replicate above the storage layer entirely. If your stack is one of these, you already have your answer and the controller selection here is not load-bearing.
Where a controller selection still matters is a mixed build: any SAS or SATA drives sharing the chassis with NVMe still route through a controller, and our standard R740xd guidance applies to those bays (H740P for real arrays, HBA330 for software-defined stacks).
If you are unsure how your redundancy plan maps to this chassis, call 1-800-778-1545 before you order. This is the one configuration where the wrong assumption about RAID gets discovered at deployment rather than at checkout.
5 Storage Drives Select up to 24 drives (0/24 Slots Used) Optional
The spec that separates NVMe drives is endurance, measured in drive writes per day (DWPD). Read-intensive drives (around 1 DWPD) cover analytics, content serving, and capacity tiers at the best cost per terabyte. Mixed-use drives (3 DWPD) are the production default for transactional databases, virtualization, and cache tiers. On a vSAN or Ceph node, put the endurance where the writes land: mixed-use in the cache or WAL role, read-intensive in capacity. If you are not sure which side your workload falls on, mixed-use is the safe answer; running out of endurance mid-deployment is the expensive mistake.
Buy new, and at this bay count we mean it more than usual. A refurbished NVMe drive arrives with unknown miles on a finite endurance budget, and on a 24-drive node one tired drive degrades the whole pool, not one server.
One thing this chassis changes about redundancy: NVMe drives connect over PCIe and do not route through a PERC controller, so plan your data protection in software (more on that in the RAID step).
Boot belongs on a Dell BOSS card, available in the Add Ons section below. Mirrored M.2 boot drives keep all twenty-four bays doing what you bought this chassis for.
6 Remote Access Required
The dividing line is the remote console. iDRAC9 Enterprise gives you full remote KVM and virtual media, meaning you can reach the server's screen, mount an ISO, and rebuild an OS from anywhere, even when the operating system is down. Express does not include the remote console, so any problem below the OS level means walking to the rack.
Our recommendation: Enterprise, and on a storage node it is closer to mandatory than optional. An R740xd typically holds a cluster's data, sits in a datacenter or colo, and gets touched rarely; that is exactly the profile where remote console, virtual media, and automated firmware updates earn their keep. Enterprise also adds two-factor authentication and secure erase, and secure erase matters on a chassis that will retire holding two dozen drives of company data.
Express is the right call only when the server sits down the hall and someone can physically reach it without ceremony.
If you are deploying 5 or more units, take Enterprise on all of them. Fleet management without remote console access does not work in practice.
7 Power Supply 2x included in build Required
A fully loaded spinning-disk chassis is the case to plan for: two dozen drives add hundreds of watts on their own, and spinning drives pull their peak current at spin-up, exactly when the server is also busiest bringing everything else online.
2x 750W covers moderate builds: mainstream CPUs with a partially populated backplane or an all-flash configuration, where per-drive draw is lower.
2x 1100W is our default for this chassis. A dual Gold build with a fully populated spinning-disk backplane lands comfortably inside it, with the 50 percent load target intact.
2x 1600W and above is for top-bin CPUs with every bay spinning, or any configuration adding GPUs to the storage role.
Two rules of thumb from our deployments. Size for roughly 50 percent load at your expected peak: a PSU running at half capacity runs at peak efficiency, runs cooler, and lasts longer than one working near its limit. And when your build sits between two tiers, size up; the price step is small. Watch the estimated TDP counter at the bottom of the page as you add components to see where your build lands.
One planning note: if more drives are coming later, size the PSU for the full backplane now. Drives arrive in twos and threes; a PSU swap is a second shipment.
8 Network Cards Required
Speed first, and on this chassis the storage role sets the floor. A node holding this many drives is almost certainly serving that capacity to other machines, and every byte leaves through this card. Quad 1 GbE (Intel i350 or Broadcom 5720) only makes sense if this is a self-contained backup or archive box that nothing else mounts. For anything serving storage (vSAN, Ceph, Storage Spaces Direct, NFS, iSCSI) treat 10 Gb as the floor: the 2x 10 Gb + 2x 1 Gb combo cards cover production traffic with 1 Gb left for management, and quad 10 Gb (Intel X710, X550, Broadcom 57840S) is the right architecture when production, replication, and management each get their own links. Rebuild and resync traffic is the hidden load here; when a node re-enters a cluster, the network is what determines whether recovery takes hours or days.
Then port type, and this is the one that catches people. SFP+ ports take fiber or DAC cables and talk to datacenter-grade switches. The -T models (X540, X550) are 10GBASE-T copper on ordinary RJ45. Neither is better; they must simply match your switch. Order SFP+ against a copper-only switch and the server racks up with nothing to plug into.
Need 25 GbE for an all-flash cluster fabric, or additional PCIe network cards beyond the NDC? Both are in the Add Ons section below, or call 1-800-778-1545 and we will spec the whole path.
9 Operating System Required
Windows Server 2022 is the version to buy today; 2019 belongs on a new build only when an application vendor requires it. Standard licensing is per core with a 16-core base, which is why our processor guidance steers Windows buyers to two 8-core CPUs: the 16-Core license covers that build exactly. Past 16 total cores, you need the 24-Core option. On CALs, count your users and round up. One xd-specific note: Storage Spaces Direct requires Datacenter edition, not Standard, so if this node is joining an S2D cluster, budget accordingly.
Fair warning on Evaluation Editions: free and fully functional for 180 days, then they expire. Right for labs and proof-of-concept, wrong for production. If the server is going into service, buy the license now.
VMware ESXi 8.0 is the one to deploy; 6.7 and 7.0 are past end of support and only belong on hosts joining an existing cluster. Licensing is yours to bring, and vSAN licensing applies on top for storage clusters.
Proxmox VE is what we increasingly quote for buyers done with VMware licensing costs, and the R740xd is arguably the best Proxmox and Ceph node in our lineup: open-source KVM virtualization with clustering and live migration, no per-core math, and a bay count built for Ceph OSDs.
Ubuntu Server LTS covers Linux storage and application duty with five years of free updates, and it is the standard base for standalone Ceph deployments.
No OS is there for teams imaging from their own deployment infrastructure, including TrueNAS builds, which this chassis handles well.
Not sure which fits? Tell us the workload at quote time, or call 1-800-778-1545.
WServer Warranty
Dell PowerEdge R740xd 24-Bay 2.5" NVMe Drives Detailed Review
The R740xd 24-Bay NVMe is Dell's maximum-density native NVMe platform in the 14th-generation 2U lineup — twenty-four 2.5" hot-swap bays connected directly to the CPU's PCIe lanes via a purpose-built NVMe backplane. This is not a SAS/SATA backplane with NVMe cards retrofitted — every bay is native NVMe, every drive connects at full PCIe bandwidth without controller overhead. At 24 bays, this platform enables NVMe cluster configurations that are otherwise only achievable with dedicated all-flash array appliances, at enterprise server economics.
We deploy this configuration for the most demanding storage performance requirements in the R740 family: large vSAN all-flash deployments running vSAN ESA architecture, NVMe-oF disaggregated storage targets serving high-concurrency compute clusters, and database platforms where sub-100 microsecond latency across a large drive population is a measured SLA. If NVMe performance at scale is the requirement, this is the platform.
Important architectural note: Native NVMe at 24 bays requires significant PCIe bandwidth. The platform manages this through PCIe bifurcation across multiple root complexes — but additional PCIe expansion cards (NICs, HBAs, GPUs) compete for the same PCIe bandwidth budget. We validate PCIe lane allocation for every 24-bay NVMe configuration before quoting. Do not assume your preferred expansion card combination is automatically compatible — let the quote process verify it.
Processors
Dual 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable (Cascade Lake). For NVMe-intensive deployments, CPU selection is more critical than on spinning disk configurations — NVMe drives connect directly to CPU PCIe lanes and high-IOPS storage workloads consume CPU cycles for I/O completion processing that a SAS HBA would otherwise handle in hardware. Gold-tier processors with 20+ cores are our standard recommendation: Gold 6230 (20 cores, 125W), Gold 6248 (20 cores, 150W), or Platinum 8260 (24 cores, 165W) for maximum NVMe throughput capacity.
High-TDP heatsink and fan requirement for processors above 150W applies — the 24-bay NVMe configuration generates significant heat from drive activity and requires correct chassis thermal management.
Memory
24 DDR4 DIMM slots. For NVMe workloads at this scale, memory is a critical design variable. vSAN ESA with 24 NVMe drives has specific memory reservation requirements per disk group — calculate these before finalizing DIMM count. For NVMe-oF storage targets, the host memory stack that manages NVMe namespaces and fabric connections has meaningful overhead at 24-drive scale. We include memory sizing validation for every NVMe configuration we quote.
Optane PMem is supported and particularly interesting alongside NVMe storage: PMem in App Direct mode provides a persistent memory tier above NVMe SSDs — useful for database log volumes, write-ahead logs, and caching architectures that need durability without the latency of NVMe writes.
Storage — 24 Native NVMe Bays
Twenty-four U.2 NVMe SSDs on a purpose-built NVMe backplane. Drive selection has significant implications for performance, endurance, and cost:
- Mixed-use NVMe (1–3 DWPD): For vSAN cache tier drives, write-intensive database storage, and any configuration with sustained write workloads. Do not use read-intensive drives for cache tier or write-heavy workloads — the endurance mismatch causes premature wear that isn't always visible until drives begin failing.
- Read-intensive NVMe (0.1–1 DWPD): For vSAN capacity tier, read-dominant database storage, object storage capacity tiers, and any configuration where writes are infrequent. Lower cost per TB than mixed-use drives with equivalent read performance.
- Capacity NVMe (high capacity, read-intensive): Newer high-capacity NVMe SSDs (up to 15 TB per drive in enterprise U.2 format) enable 24-bay configurations approaching 360 TB raw — at NVMe latency. This is the configuration for deployments where both capacity and NVMe performance are requirements that previously required multiple separate appliances.
NVMe endurance assessment on refurbished units: Every NVMe drive in a refurbished configuration is assessed for remaining endurance using SMART data and vendor tooling. We do not ship drives with significant endurance consumption without full disclosure and pricing adjustment. This is a non-negotiable part of our NVMe refurbishment process.
BOSS module: Mandatory. All 24 bays for NVMe data storage.
RAID / Storage Management
NVMe drives in this chassis connect directly to CPU PCIe lanes — traditional PERC RAID controllers do not manage NVMe backplane drives. Redundancy must be managed at the software layer:
- VMware vSAN ESA / OSA: vSAN manages NVMe drive redundancy through storage policies. HBA330 or equivalent pass-through for any SAS/SATA auxiliary drives — the NVMe backplane connects directly without a controller intermediary.
- Software RAID (ZFS, mdraid): For Linux-based NVMe-oF targets or object storage deployments managing redundancy at the software layer.
- NVMe-oF target software: SPDK, nvmet, or vendor-specific NVMe-oF target stacks manage drive access and fabric presentation for disaggregated storage architectures.
Networking
At 24 NVMe drives, the network is almost certainly the first bottleneck in any client-facing deployment. A single modern NVMe SSD can saturate a 10 GbE link — 24 drives simultaneously could generate throughput that exceeds 100 GbE if the workload pattern allows it. Our recommendations:
- Dual-port 25 GbE SFP28: Minimum viable for vSAN all-flash nodes in production deployments.
- Dual-port 100 GbE QSFP28: Our recommendation for NVMe-oF targets and high-concurrency vSAN clusters where network bandwidth must keep pace with storage performance.
- 200 Gb/s InfiniBand HDR: For NVMe-oF deployments requiring maximum fabric bandwidth and RDMA capability. Contact us for InfiniBand NIC availability and configuration at quote time.
Power Supplies
2x 1600W Platinum required for fully-populated 24-NVMe configurations. NVMe drives at 24-unit population draw approximately 150–240W steady-state (6–10W per drive depending on model and load state), plus CPU and memory draw. Total system draw at full load: 1000–1300W depending on CPU TDP selection. 1600W PSUs with redundant configuration provide appropriate headroom.
Our Assessment
The R740xd 24-Bay NVMe occupies a specific and compelling position in the market: enterprise server economics with dedicated all-flash appliance NVMe drive density. It is not a general-purpose server with NVMe bolted on — it is a purpose-built NVMe storage platform that also runs a full enterprise compute stack. The workloads that justify this configuration are specific and demanding: large-scale vSAN ESA deployments, NVMe-oF disaggregated storage in high-concurrency compute environments, and databases where latency at scale is a measured business requirement.
If your workload needs NVMe performance at 24-drive scale, this is the refurbished platform to evaluate. If you need fewer NVMe drives, the R640 10-Bay NVMe or R740xd at lower bay counts may provide a more cost-effective solution for your specific requirements.
Where to look instead:
- Fewer NVMe drives needed? → R640 10-Bay NVMe or R740xd at lower bay count
- Need SAS/SATA flexibility? → R740xd 24-Bay 2.5" SAS/SATA
- Need PCIe Gen4 NVMe? → R750xa (contact us for availability)
Workload Fit
| This server excels at | Consider alternatives for |
|---|---|
| ✅ VMware vSAN ESA all-flash at scale | ❌ Fewer than 12 NVMe drives needed |
| ✅ NVMe-oF disaggregated storage targets | ❌ Hardware RAID for all volumes |
| ✅ High-concurrency NVMe database platforms | ❌ PCIe Gen4 NVMe performance (use R750xa) |
| ✅ Sub-100μs latency at 24-drive scale | ❌ LFF capacity or SAS/SATA flexibility needed |
Ready to Configure?
24-bay NVMe configurations start with a design conversation — PCIe lane allocation, vSAN architecture (ESA vs. OSA), drive endurance selection, network fabric sizing, and power budget all require validation before hardware ships. Contact our account team with your NVMe workload requirements, target drive count, fabric architecture (vSAN, NVMe-oF, software RAID), and quantity. We return a validated configuration and formal pricing within 24 hours.
Save Your Design
Click the Add to Quote button at the bottom of your screen to save your design as a draft order for future reference and to check for discounts, lead time, and availability. Most servers ship within 1-3 days.
