The Dell PowerEdge R750xs 8-Bay NVMe is the all-flash specialty configuration of Dell's 15th gen 2U platform: eight 2.5" front bays running as native PCIe Gen4 NVMe through the Universal Backplane in NVMe mode, every bay backed by Gen4 bandwidth, on the dual-socket-capable Ice Lake-SP architecture with 16 DIMM slots. This is the R750xs to reach for when NVMe storage performance is the primary design driver: vSAN ESA single-socket nodes, NVMe-oF target nodes, distributed NVMe storage at scale-out economics, and database platforms where sub-100 microsecond storage latency is the requirement at value-tier 2U pricing.

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 NVMe 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 All-NVMe Is the Right Call

This variant is the same R750xs chassis as the 8-Bay 2.5", with the Universal Backplane explicitly configured for all-NVMe operation rather than the mixed-protocol flexibility of the SAS/SATA build. It is procured when the buyer has decided up front that NVMe is the storage tier.

• Every bay PCIe Gen4 NVMe-configured. The hardware is the same Universal Backplane; the build-time configuration is the difference. The 8-Bay 2.5" typically ships SAS/SATA-configured for mixed-protocol flexibility; this variant ships all-NVMe.
• vSAN ESA-ready out of the box. ESA wants all-NVMe; this configuration ships ESA-ready with no protocol conversion needed.
• Pre-configured for NVMe pass-through. The HBA355i is the standard controller, and the NVMe drives present directly to the OS with no RAID controller in the data path.
• Networking assumption is more aggressive. Eight Gen4 NVMe drives generate throughput that 10 GbE cannot surface. 25 GbE is the minimum baseline; 100 GbE for NVMe-oF or high-concurrency ESA.

Storage - 8 Native PCIe Gen4 NVMe Bays

Eight U.2 NVMe SSDs on the Universal Backplane in NVMe mode, each bay at PCIe Gen4 bandwidth (7+ GB/s sequential read per drive). Aggregate sequential read at full population is 56+ GB/s theoretical, limited in practice by PCIe fabric layout, the network ceiling, and application concurrency.

NVMe drive selection

• Mixed-use NVMe (1-3 DWPD): for the vSAN ESA write tier, write-intensive databases, NVMe-oF targets, and Ceph bluestore. Do not use read-intensive drives for write-heavy workloads; the endurance mismatch causes premature wear and unexpected failures.
• Read-intensive NVMe (0.1-1 DWPD): for the ESA capacity tier, read-dominant databases, distributed object storage, and read-heavy application workloads. Lower cost per TB at equivalent read performance.
• Capacity selection: 1.6 TB, 3.2 TB, 6.4 TB, and 7.68 TB U.2 NVMe drives all qualify, with 15.36 TB qualified on most generations. Match capacity to IOPS density: 8 x 1.6 TB gives 12.8 TB at higher per-drive IOPS, 8 x 7.68 TB gives 61 TB at lower IOPS density.

Every NVMe drive we ship is assessed for remaining endurance via SMART before shipment. Drives with significant endurance consumption are disclosed and priced accordingly.

Common storage architectures

• vSAN ESA: eight Gen4 NVMe drives in a unified ESA storage pool per node, HBA355i pass-through, vSphere 8.x required, 25 GbE minimum and 100 GbE recommended.
• NVMe-oF target: eight Gen4 NVMe drives served to client hosts over RoCE or TCP fabric, with 100 GbE or InfiniBand for the fabric.
• Ceph all-NVMe OSD node: eight Gen4 NVMe OSDs per node, Bluestore on HBA355i pass-through, 128 to 256 GB memory.
• Direct-attached database tier: eight NVMe drives presented to SQL Server, Oracle, or PostgreSQL with mdadm or Storage Spaces software RAID, for sub-100 microsecond latency on transaction logs and active tablespaces.

Boot: BOSS-S1 add-in card with dual mirrored M.2 SATA SSDs keeps the OS off the front bays, so all eight NVMe bays stay available for data. IDSDM and internal USB are also available for hypervisor boot.

Storage Controllers

On an all-NVMe node the controller story is deliberately simple: the drives want to talk to the CPU PCIe lanes directly, and the storage redundancy lives in software.

• HBA355i (pass-through): the standard controller on this variant and the correct choice for vSAN ESA, Ceph, ZFS, and any software-defined NVMe stack. No RAID; the storage layer owns the drives.
• Direct NVMe attach: the U.2 NVMe bays connect to the CPU PCIe lanes through the backplane, not through a PERC, which is what delivers the Gen4 latency profile.
• Hardware NVMe RAID is rarely the right call. Software-defined redundancy (vSAN, Ceph, ZFS, mdadm) generally outperforms a hardware NVMe RAID controller on this class of workload. We quote PERC 11 hardware RAID (H755 / H745) only where a customer specifically needs SAS/SATA RAID alongside, which is not the all-NVMe use case.

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 for read-dominant NVMe nodes where the CPU is mostly servicing IO.
• Gold 5300 / 6300 series: the production default for ESA, NVMe-oF, and database nodes. A 32-core Gold 6338 (or the network-optimized 6338N) is the practical top bin on the xs; the cores matter when the storage layer runs erasure coding, checksumming, or compression in the data path.
• Single-socket vs. dual-socket: a single socket covers most mid-sized NVMe database and edge nodes. Step to dual-socket when the node needs the full sixteen DIMM slots and the extra PCIe lanes for 100 GbE plus a dedicated HBA.

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, NVMe-oF, and NVMe database 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-NVMe OSD nodes; for vSAN ESA, follow the cluster's per-node RAM sizing for the working set plus dedup and compression overhead.

Networking and PCIe Expansion

On an all-NVMe node the network is the storage performance ceiling for most deployments, so the NIC choice is a first-order decision. Networking uses the OCP NIC 3.0 slot, the 15th gen shift away from the rack Network Daughter Card (rNDC) of 13th and 14th gen, and it does not consume a standard PCIe slot.

• Dual-port 25 GbE SFP28 (OCP 3.0): the minimum recommendation, acceptable for ESA clusters with moderate east-west traffic and modest client-facing demand.
• Dual-port 100 GbE QSFP28: the standard for NVMe-oF targets and high-concurrency ESA, and the right answer wherever NVMe latency and aggregate throughput both matter.
• Dual-port 200 GbE (where qualified): specialty configurations for the most demanding NVMe-oF or HPC storage targets.
• PCIe expansion: up to 6 PCIe Gen4 slots (five Gen4 plus one Gen3), riser-dependent. On an NVMe node the slots typically carry the high-speed NIC and the HBA, leaving room for a fabric card on the dual-socket build.

GPU Support

The 8-Bay NVMe is a storage-performance chassis, not a GPU platform; the PCIe and power budget here is committed to NVMe and high-speed networking. The 2U xs can host a single low-profile single-width accelerator where a node also runs light inference alongside storage, but that is an edge case. For GPU compute, the full R750 is the 2U GPU platform (up to two to three double-width cards); see the R750 24-Bay 2.5" flagship line 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 clustered NVMe storage node: full remote console, virtual media, and the alerting a lights-out 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

NVMe configurations draw less power than equivalent spinning-disk builds, so the 800W and 1100W tiers cover most R750xs NVMe deployments. All PSUs are hot-plug redundant Platinum.

The lower-power NVMe profile is not a license to drop PSU redundancy; redundant Platinum PSUs are the production standard. Data center ambient (up to 35C / 95F standard) is assumed.

Physical Specs & Platform Notes

• Form factor: 2U rack, full-depth chassis. An all-NVMe build is lighter than a spinning-disk chassis; standard rack handling applies, and a cable management arm helps on the cabled, high-speed-networked node.
• PCIe expansion: up to 6 slots (five Gen4 plus one Gen3), full-height and low-profile depending on riser. On the NVMe node the slots carry the NIC and HBA.
• 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 100 GbE node.
• Platform notes: NVMe bays connect to CPU PCIe lanes through the backplane (no PERC in the NVMe data path); 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 nodes at eight Gen4 NVMe, NVMe-oF target nodes, distributed NVMe storage (Ceph, MinIO) at scale-out economics, local-NVMe database nodes, and Kubernetes workers needing local persistent NVMe at sub-100 microsecond latency. The headline case is ESA at eight NVMe per single-socket node, where the value-tier economics deliver real per-node savings over the R750 flagship while keeping full ESA capability.

Where to look instead: for more NVMe density per node, the R750xs 16-Bay 2.5" or the R750 24-Bay 2.5". For SAS/SATA mixed-protocol flexibility, the R750xs 8-Bay 2.5". For LFF capacity drives, the R750xs 8-Bay 3.5". For a 1U footprint, the R650xs 8-Bay 2.5". For cost-primary NVMe where Gen3 bandwidth is acceptable, the 14th gen R640 10-Bay NVMe.

Bottom line: this is the 15th gen 2U value-tier all-NVMe platform for scale-out and ESA deployments where per-node cost matters and eight NVMe per node is the right density. The typical customer is an IT team building a cost-disciplined ESA, NVMe-oF, or distributed-storage cluster and choosing eight high-performance drives per node over a denser, costlier flagship. Where the requirement is fundamentally more density or more compute, that is the 16-Bay xs, the R750 flagship, or the 16th-gen R760xs, not a reconfigured eight-bay.

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.
• Storage performance ceiling is the network. Eight Gen4 NVMe drives can saturate 25 GbE; for NVMe-oF or aggregate-throughput deployments, plan 100 GbE from the start.
• NVMe drive endurance is a real procurement decision. Mixed-use (1-3 DWPD) and read-intensive (0.1-1 DWPD) drives differ significantly in cost and lifespan. Right-size endurance to the workload rather than over-buying or under-buying.
• NVMe wear monitoring is an operational concern. SMART data must be monitored; NVMe drives can fail without the classic SAS SSD warning patterns. Plan replacement on endurance consumption, not chassis age.
• Eight bays is the density ceiling on this variant. If the design needs sixteen or twenty-four NVMe per node, this is the wrong chassis; go wider on the 16-Bay xs or the R750 24-Bay.
• Aggregate NVMe throughput is platform-bound. The xs single-socket-optimized PCIe lane budget can limit sustained maximum-throughput NVMe under heavy concurrency; the R750 flagship's larger PCIe budget is the right call there.

Workload Fit

Where to Look Instead

• Need SAS/SATA flexibility? The R750xs 8-Bay 2.5" runs the Universal Backplane in mixed-protocol mode.
• Need 16 NVMe per node? The R750xs 16-Bay 2.5" (higher density on the same platform).
• Need 24 NVMe per node? The R750 24-Bay 2.5" (flagship territory).
• Need LFF capacity drives? The R750xs 8-Bay 3.5" (NL-SAS NAS and Ceph capacity tier).
• Need a 1U platform? The R650xs 8-Bay 2.5" (1U value-tier).
• 14th gen NVMe at lower cost? The R640 10-Bay NVMe (Cascade Lake, PCIe Gen3 NVMe).
• Cross-vendor counterpart: the HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen11 is the closest HPE 2U analog. We do not currently stock a configured DL380 Gen11 NVMe page; ask and we will advise.

Ready to Configure?

NVMe builds benefit from an upfront discussion of drive endurance, network sizing, the vSAN / NVMe-oF / Ceph architecture, memory for the software storage stack, and PCIe lane allocation. Tell us your storage architecture, drive endurance target, network speed, memory target, 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 NVMe 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.