Dell PowerEdge T620

Dell PowerEdge T620. Dell continues to push the envelope in feature set and capabilities in its PowerEdge server line—enterprise-level servers targeted to the SMB. The T620 is custom-made for fault-tolerance, redundancy and virtualization. Powerful performance. High scalability. Many expansion options. Virtualization capable. Many management options. Remote management. Runs quiet. Couple of glitches in some management utilities. Lengthy boot up.

With all the clamor over cloud computing, it would seem datacenters everywhere are freeing businesses from the yoke of on-premise servers and embracing the ethereal world of the “you-name-it-you-got-it-as-a-service” cloud. The reality is that many datacenters, particularly in the SMB, are more likely to deploy virtualization solutions in physical servers they host, because they remain leery of the cloud. Robust servers, like Dell's latest PowerEdge T620 remind us what SMBs love about servers: fault-tolerance, scalability and efficient virtualization.

Virtualization and fault tolerance are the hallmarks of the T620. While it may be too much server for smaller businesses without high data demands, for SMBs that are looking to consolidate physical servers into virtual machines, that have high workloads, or that need remote server administration, the T620 is well worth considering.

Specs
The T620 is built on Intel's SandyBridge EP/EX processor technology. The unit I tested had dual Intel Xeon E5-2650 @2.00 GHz processors and 64 GB RAM. The server houses 32 drive bays and supports SAS, SSD and SATA drives in a variety of configurations. For example, the drives can consist of eight 3.5” hot swap drives plus four PCIe SSD drives or you could go with 32 3.5” hot-swap drives. The maximum storage capacity is 32TB and maximum memory is up to 768GB with 24 DIMM slots.

The T620 has tons of expansion options. The rear panel alone has 7 PCIe slots, as well as 6 USB ports, VGA, and a console port. The front has two additional USB ports and what looks like an SD card reader, but it's for a special type of SD card: vFlash cards. Used in conjunction with iDRAC, Dell's Integrated Remote Access Control/Life Cycle Controller features, the vFlash card allows server admins to emulate USB flash storage and perform tasks such as backing up and restoring the platform in case the motherboard needs replacing or perhaps for downloading and booting a custom image from BIOS.

The server also has redundant hot-plug fans, dual Gigabit Ethernet ports as well as redundant power supplies. This redundant hardware, in addition to dual hypervisors comes as a standard offering in the T620.

An LCD on the front plate gives at-a-glance system messages and also allows for configuring some features at the touch-of-a-button like networking settings, asset tag number, and more.

It's apparent that Dell set out to create a server that is quite scalable and pretty-well future-proofed. It's worth noting that Dell included redundant hypervisors that can support Microsoft's Hyper-V which is slated to undergo many new capabilities evidenced by Windows Server 8's recent beta debut. The T620 also features optional embedded hypervisors for Citrix XenServer and VMWare vsphere. Clearly, software and hardware vendors are banking on the wide-spread adoption of virtualization in SMB datacenters.

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