The Dell PowerEdge R750xs 16-Bay 2.5" is the maximum small-form-factor (SFF) density configuration of Dell's 15th gen 2U platform: sixteen 2.5" hot-plug bays on the Universal Backplane with PCIe Gen4 NVMe support, built on the dual-socket-capable Ice Lake-SP architecture but tuned for value-tier economics. For vSAN ESA single-socket nodes, scale-out software-defined storage clusters, and high-density SFF workloads that need more than eight bays at value-tier 2U pricing, this is the R750xs configuration to evaluate first.

Condition: this R750xs is available Surplus New or Refurbished. Surplus New means genuinely unused excess inventory, never deployed, priced below Dell-direct new because it sits outside Dell's normal new-sales channel; the Wholesale Servers warranty applies either way. As a 15th gen platform, the R750xs is no longer sold factory-new by Dell, so we are straight about which condition you are quoting. Both conditions carry the same burn-in and inspection process.

To configure a build, call 1-800-778-1545 or use the quote form on this page. Volume pricing applies at 5 units and up. Every unit ships after a 12+ hour burn-in that exercises every drive bay, memory channel, and PCIe lane, and carries our standard 180-day warranty with optional 1-Year, 2-Year, and 3-Year Premium coverage.

When 16 SFF Bays Is the Right Density

The 16-Bay 2.5" is the high-density SFF configuration of the R750xs line, doubling the bay count of the 8-Bay 2.5" while keeping the value-tier compute envelope. It is the chassis to reach for when per-node storage density is the design variable.

• Double the SFF bay count. Sixteen bays vs. eight on the 8-Bay 2.5". For storage-density workloads on the R750xs platform, this is the variant that matters.
• Universal Backplane NVMe scales with bay count. Up to sixteen PCIe Gen4 NVMe drives per node in an all-NVMe build. Exact NVMe-capable bay count is backplane-SKU dependent on the xs, so specify the NVMe configuration at quote time and we will confirm the backplane that delivers it.
• vSAN ESA per-node density. Sixteen NVMe drives in a value-tier 2U chassis is a compelling vSAN ESA building block for clusters where per-node cost matters and the full R750 flagship envelope is more than the workload needs.
• PCIe slot budget unchanged from the 8-Bay. Same 6-slot PCIe envelope (five Gen4 plus one Gen3). Storage density doubles; PCIe expansion does not, which makes the slot layout the thing to plan at high density.
• PSU envelope steps up at full population. Sixteen active drives plus dual Gold CPUs plus 100 GbE pushes the xs into the 1400W PSU tier as standard, against the 800W to 1100W typical on the 8-Bay.

Storage - 16 SFF Bays with Universal Backplane

Sixteen 2.5" hot-swap bays supporting SAS, SATA, or NVMe through the Universal Backplane. This NVMe-on-SFF capability is the reason the SFF chassis, not the LFF, is the vSAN ESA and software-defined-storage platform in the R750xs line. Common 16-Bay configurations:

• vSAN ESA all-flash (16 NVMe): single-socket-optimized ESA node at maximum NVMe density on the xs. HBA355i pass-through, 100 GbE recommended for high-density ESA (25 GbE acceptable on smaller cluster designs), vSphere 8.x ESA required.
• vSAN OSA hybrid (SAS SSD plus HDD): two to four SAS SSD cache drives plus twelve to fourteen NL-SAS capacity drives in OSA disk groups. vSphere 7.x and 8.x both supported.
• All-SAS SSD database storage: sixteen SAS SSDs at RAID 10 gives eight drives usable at maximum write endurance. For SQL Server, Oracle, and PostgreSQL where local SSD capacity is the requirement and value-tier economics make sense.
• Mixed NVMe plus SAS: some Universal Backplane SKUs partition NVMe and SAS bays, giving a hot NVMe tier and a warm SAS tier in one chassis.
• Ceph all-SSD OSD nodes: sixteen SAS SSDs as Ceph OSDs on HBA355i pass-through, Bluestore, 128 to 256 GB memory.

Boot: BOSS-S1 add-in card with dual mirrored M.2 SATA SSDs keeps the OS off the front bays, so all sixteen front bays stay available for data and boot redundancy does not consume a bay or a controller channel. IDSDM and internal USB are also available for hypervisor boot.

Storage Controllers

The R750xs uses Dell's PERC 11 controller family. At sixteen bays the controller decision is workload-defining, because the all-NVMe and software-defined paths want pass-through while the hardware-RAID paths want a cached controller.

• HBA355i (pass-through): the correct choice for vSAN ESA, Ceph, ZFS, and any software-defined stack that manages disks directly. No RAID; the storage layer owns the drives. This is the default for the ESA and SDS use cases above.
• PERC H755: the production hardware-RAID controller. 8 GB cache, battery-backed, full RAID 0/1/5/6/10/50/60. For all-SAS-SSD database arrays and RAID-protected SFF pools.
• PERC H745: mainstream hardware RAID with RAID 5/6 where the H755 is more than needed.
• PERC H345: RAID 0/1/10 only. A common field trap is quoting an H355 or H345 and expecting parity RAID; those cards do not do RAID 5/6. RAID 5/6 requires the H755 or H745.
• PERC S150 (software RAID): chipset-based, boot or light workloads only. We do not quote S150 for production storage.
• NVMe note: direct-attached NVMe bays connect to the CPU PCIe lanes through the backplane rather than through a PERC; the HBA355i covers the SAS/SATA bays in mixed builds.

Processors

The R750xs runs 3rd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable (Ice Lake-SP, 2021) on Socket LGA 4189, up to two sockets. The cost-optimized xs platform caps each socket at 32 cores, against the 40-core ceiling of the full R650/R750.

• Silver 4300 series: the value tier, adequate where the node is storage-first and the CPU is mostly servicing IO.
• Gold 5300 / 6300 series: the production default for ESA, SDS, and database nodes. A 32-core Gold 6338 (or the network-optimized 6338N) is the practical top bin on the xs; the extra cores and clock matter when the storage layer runs checksumming, erasure coding, or dedup.
• Single-socket vs. dual-socket: a single-socket build halves the memory channels and the PCIe lane budget. At sixteen drives plus an HBA plus 100 GbE, a single socket runs short of lanes; the dual-socket build is usually the right call at this density even when per-core demand is modest.

Top-bin CPUs require the high-performance heatsink. Ordering a high-TDP CPU with the standard heatsink is a common configuration error that thermally throttles the part under sustained load.

Memory

The R750xs carries 16 DDR4 DIMM slots, eight channels per socket at one DIMM per channel. This is the defining value-tier delta against the full R650/R750, which carry 32 slots at two DIMMs per channel.

• Type: registered ECC RDIMM only. No LRDIMM, no Intel Optane Persistent Memory on the xs. If a workload needs LRDIMM density or Optane, that is the signal to step up to the full R750.
• Maximum capacity: 1 TB with 16 x 64 GB RDIMM. Sufficient for most ESA, SDS, and high-density SFF nodes.
• Speed: DDR4-3200 at one DIMM per channel. The 1 DPC topology means there is no two-DIMM-per-channel speed step-down to plan around; the platform runs at rated speed when fully populated.
• Sizing guidance: 128 to 256 GB for Ceph all-SSD OSD nodes; for vSAN ESA, follow the cluster's per-node RAM sizing for the working set and dedup/compression overhead.

Networking and PCIe Expansion

Networking on the R750xs uses the OCP NIC 3.0 slot, the 15th gen shift away from the rack Network Daughter Card (rNDC) of 13th and 14th gen. The OCP 3.0 mezzanine does not consume a standard PCIe slot.

• OCP NIC 3.0 options: dual 1 GbE, dual/quad 10 GbE, dual 25 GbE, and dual 100 GbE. For a fully-loaded ESA node, 100 GbE is the right baseline; 25 GbE suits smaller cluster designs and the OSA hybrid configurations.
• PCIe expansion: up to 6 PCIe Gen4 slots (five Gen4 plus one Gen3), riser-dependent. At sixteen bays the slot budget is the binding constraint: an HBA, a high-speed add-in NIC, and any additional card compete for the same six slots, so plan the layout at design time.

GPU Support

The 16-Bay 2.5" is a storage-density chassis, and at full population the PCIe slot and power budget is committed to storage and networking rather than accelerators. The 2U xs can host a single low-profile single-width GPU where a node also runs light inference, but a high-density storage node rarely has the slot or power headroom to spare. For GPU compute, the full R750 is the 2U GPU platform (up to two to three double-width cards); see the R750 16-Bay 2.5" flagship or a Dell tower for GPU-oriented builds.

Management - iDRAC9

The R750xs ships with iDRAC9 (15th gen) in Express, Enterprise, and Datacenter tiers. Enterprise is the practical default for a lights-out ESA or SDS node: full remote console, virtual media, and the alerting a clustered storage node needs.

• Security baseline: Silicon Root of Trust, Secure Boot, Secure Erase, and System Lockdown mode, with TPM 1.2/2.0 options.
• Lifecycle Controller: agent-free firmware updates and bare-metal provisioning, with OpenManage Enterprise integration for managing the cluster as a fleet.

Power and Cooling

At sixteen-bay full population the xs sits closer to its PSU envelope ceiling than the 8-Bay, so size the supplies to the active drive count, CPU TDP, and network speed rather than to idle draw. All PSUs are hot-plug redundant Platinum.

The 600W PSU tier is generally undersized for sixteen-bay full configurations; reserve it for 8-Bay light deployments. Data center ambient (up to 35C / 95F standard) is assumed.

Physical Specs & Platform Notes

• Form factor: 2U rack, full-depth chassis. Sixteen drives add roughly 5 to 8 lbs over the 8-Bay; a two-person lift is recommended for installation and a cable management arm helps service access.
• PCIe expansion: up to 6 slots (five Gen4 plus one Gen3), full-height and low-profile depending on riser. The slot budget, not the chassis, is the binding constraint at sixteen-bay density.
• Parts availability: 15th gen is current; Dell ProSupport-class parts availability is strong and the R750xs is well within its serviceable life.
• Accessories we recommend: the LCD bezel for at-a-glance health, and the B21 2U sliding rail kit shared across the R550/R750xs/R760 (see the R750xs B21 sliding rails). A cable management arm is worth a slot on a dense, cabled storage node.
• Platform notes: NVMe-capable bay count is backplane-SKU dependent (specify at quote); BOSS-S1 is an add-in PCIe card on this platform, not an embedded module; CPU hot-plug is not supported.

Our Assessment

Where it excels: single-socket vSAN ESA cluster nodes at sixteen NVMe per node, software-defined storage scale-out (Ceph, GlusterFS, commercial SDS), VDI hosts with large local SSD pools, and high-density application servers where local SSD capacity is the design variable. For mid-sized ESA clusters of roughly six to twenty-four nodes where per-node cost is a meaningful metric, this is the configuration to price first.

Where to look instead: if eight bays is enough, the lower-cost R750xs 8-Bay 2.5" covers most deployments. For an NVMe-dedicated eight-bay node, the R750xs 8-Bay NVMe is the focused option. For LFF capacity drives, the R750xs 8-Bay 3.5" or 12-Bay 3.5" are the right chassis. If the requirement is genuinely bigger compute, memory, or PCIe (32 DIMM slots, Optane, 40-core Platinum), the R750 16-Bay 2.5" or the R750 24-Bay 2.5" is the platform.

Bottom line: this is the 15th gen 2U value-tier platform for high-density SFF storage. The 8-Bay covers most R750xs deployments; the 16-Bay earns its premium when per-node storage density is the design variable, and it is the strongest fit in the value tier for single-socket vSAN ESA and scale-out SDS. The 16-Bay is wider, not bigger; if the requirement is fundamentally more compute or memory, that is the R750 flagship, not a wider xs. The typical customer is an IT team building a cost-disciplined ESA or SDS cluster at six to twenty-four nodes.

Honest Limitations

• Value-tier envelope. 16 DIMM slots, 1 TB RDIMM max, 32-core CPU cap, no Optane PMem, BOSS-S1 as an add-in card, 6 PCIe slots (five Gen4 plus one Gen3). If any of those is a hard constraint, the full R750 is the platform.
• PCIe slot budget is the binding constraint at high density. Sixteen NVMe drives plus a dedicated HBA plus 100 GbE plus any optional card stress the six-slot envelope. Plan the PCIe layout at design time.
• Fully-loaded ESA at sixteen NVMe needs 100 GbE. 25 GbE is undersized for a fully-populated ESA node at this density.
• Aggregate NVMe throughput is platform-bound, not chassis-bound. The xs single-socket-optimized PCIe lane budget means sixteen drives under maximum concurrency can run into platform-level lane limits. For sustained maximum-throughput NVMe, the R750 flagship's larger PCIe budget is the right call.
• Higher full-loaded weight than the 8-Bay. Sixteen drives add roughly 5 to 8 lbs; a two-person lift is recommended.
• PSU envelope tighter than the flagship. The xs tops out around 1400W vs. up to 2400W on the full R750. For any GPU plus high-density-storage combination, the PSU ceiling can be the design constraint.

Workload Fit

Where to Look Instead

• Do not need sixteen bays? The R750xs 8-Bay 2.5" is the lower-cost primary configuration.
• Need an NVMe-dedicated eight-bay? The R750xs 8-Bay NVMe.
• Need LFF capacity drives? The R750xs 8-Bay 3.5" or 12-Bay 3.5".
• Need 32 DIMM slots, Optane, or 40-core Platinum? The R750 16-Bay 2.5" flagship.
• Need 24-bay NVMe density? The R750 24-Bay 2.5" (flagship territory).
• 14th gen at lower cost? The R740 16-Bay 2.5" (Cascade Lake, PCIe Gen3, no Universal Backplane and no ESA path) is valid where 14th gen-class storage performance is acceptable.
• Cross-vendor counterpart: the HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen11 is the closest HPE 2U analog. We do not currently stock a configured DL380 Gen11 SFF page; ask and we will advise.

Ready to Configure?

Tell us your workload (vSAN ESA architecture, SDS platform, VDI density, application requirement), drive type and quantity, memory target, network speed, server quantity, and whether you want it quoted Surplus New or Refurbished. We respond within 24 hours. Volume pricing applies at 5 units and above.

Every Wholesale Servers R750xs ships after a 12+ hour burn-in covering every PCIe slot, every memory channel, and every drive bay, with a standard 180-day warranty and optional 1-Year, 2-Year, and 3-Year Premium coverage. Call 1-800-778-1545 or use the quote form on this page to start a build.