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Dell, the DELL logo, the DELL badge, PowerEdge, EqualLogic, PowerVault, PowerConnect, OpenManage,KACE, and ReadyRails are trademarks of Dell, Inc. Citrix and XenServer are trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc.and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Officeand in other countries. Intel and Xeon are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and othercountries. HP is a trademark of Hewlett-Packard Company. Broadcom is a registered trademark andNetXtreme is a trademark of Broadcom Corporation and/or its affiliates in the United States, certain othercountries and/or the EU. Matrox is a registered trademark of Matrox Electronic Systems Ltd. Microsoft,Windows, Windows Server, SQL Server, and BitLocker, and Hyper-V are either registered trademarks ortrademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. PCI Express is a registeredtrademark of PCI-SIG. Red Hat is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc. in the United States and othercountries. SUSE is a registered trademark of Novell, Inc., in the United States and other countries. Linux is aregistered trademark of Linus Torvalds. QLogic is a registered trademark of QLogic Corporation. VMware,vSphere, vCenter, ESX, and ESXi are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United Statesand/or other jurisdictions. Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to eitherthe entities claiming the marks and names or their products. Dell disclaims proprietary interest in the marksand names of others. Copyright 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction or translation of any part of this work beyond thatpermitted by U.S. copyright laws without the written permission of Dell Inc. is unlawful and strictly forbidden.February 2012 Rev 1.0iiPowerEdge R720 and R720xd Technical Guide

Table of contents1 System overview . 6Introduction . 6New technologies . 72 System features . 8Specifications . 8Comparison of PowerEdge systems . 103 Chassis views and features . 11Chassis views . 11Chassis features .144 Processors .18Processor features .18Supported processors .19GPU support .19Chipset . 205 Memory . 21Supported memory . 21Memory configurations . 22Memory speed . 23Memory RAS features. 246 Storage . 25Internal storage . 25External storage . 27Storage controllers . 27Optical drives . 29Tape drives . 297 Networking and PCIe . 30Select Network Adapters . 30PCIe expansion . 328 Power, thermal, and acoustics . 34Power consumption and energy efficiency . 34Power supply units . 35Thermal and acoustics. 369 Rack rails and cable management . 39Sliding and static rail systems . 39Cable management arm.4110 Operating systems and virtualization . 42Supported operating systems. 42Supported virtualization . 4311 Dell OpenManage systems management . 44Systems management solutions . 44OpenManage systems management . 45Dell server management operations . 49Appendix A.Additional specifications . 52Chassis dimensions . 52Chassis weight. 52Power supply specifications . 53Environmental specifications . 53Video specifications . 54Rack rail specifications . 55USB peripherals . 55iiiPowerEdge R720 and R720xd Technical Guide

Appendix B.Standards compliance . 56Appendix C.Additional resources. 57Table 1.Table 2.Table 3.Table 4.Table 5.Table 6.Table 7.Table 8.Table 9.Table 10.Table 11.Table 12.Table 13.Table 14.Table 15.Table 16.Table 17.Table 18.Table 19.Table 20.Table 21.Table 22.Table 23.Table 24.Table 25.Table 26.Table 27.Table 28.Table 29.Table 30.Table 31.Table 32.Table 33.Table 34.Table 35.Table 36.New technologies . 7Technical specifications . 8Comparison of PowerEdge R710, R720, and R720xd . 10Chassis features .14Security features .16Supported processors .19Memory technologies supported . 21DIMMs supported . 22Memory speed capabilities . 23Memory RAS features . 24Chassis options . 25Supported hard drives . 26Supported external storage device types. 27RAID controllers . 28Supported Select Network Adapter options and features . 31PCIe expansion slots . 32Supported NICs and HBAs . 32Supported PCIe expansion cards . 33Power tools and technologies . 34Power supply efficiency . 36R720 acoustical performance (2.5-inch chassis) . 38R720xd acoustical performance (2.5-inch chassis) . 38Supported rack rail system . 40Primary operating system support . 42Virtual guest operating system support . 43Virtualization support . 43iDRAC7 with Lifecycle Controller functions and benefits . 45Feature comparison for iDRAC7 Express and Enterprise . 46One-to-one and one-to-many operations . 50Chassis weight . 52Power supply specifications . 53Environmental specifications . 53Supported video modes . 54Rail adjustability ranges . 55Industry standard documents . 56Additional resources . 57Figure 1.Figure 2.Figure 3.Figure 4.Figure 5.Figure 6.Figure 7.Figure 8.Figure 9.Figure 10.Figure 11.Figure 12.R720 front view (2.5” chassis with bezel) . 11R720 front view (2.5” chassis without bezel) . 11R720xd front view (with bezel) . 12R720xd front view (2.5-inch chassis without bezel) . 12R720 back view . 12R720xd back view. 13R720 internal chassis view . 13R720xd internal chassis view .14R720 LCD control panel. 15R720xd LED panel . 15QRL code inside chassis.16Rack network daughter card (NDC) . 30ivPowerEdge R720 and R720xd Technical Guide

Figure 13.Figure 14.Figure 15.Figure 16.Figure 17.Figure 18.750W power supply unit (R720) . 36Sliding rails with optional CMA . 39Static rails . 40Dell systems management solutions . 44Systems management server lifecycle . 50Chassis dimensions . 52.vPowerEdge R720 and R720xd Technical Guide

The Dell PowerEdge R720 and R720xd are Dell’s latest 2-socket, 2U rack servers that aredesigned to run complex workloads using highly scalable memory, I/O capacity, and flexiblenetwork options. Both systems feature the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family,up to 24 DIMMS, PCI Express (PCIe) 3.0 enabled expansion slots, and a choice of NIC technologies.The PowerEdge R720 is a general-purpose platform with highly expandable memory (up to 768GB)and impressive I/O capabilities to match. The R720 can readily handle very demanding workloads,such as data warehouses, e-commerce, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), databases, and highperformance computing (HPC) as a data node.In addition to the R720’s capabilities, the R720xd offers extraordinary storage capacity, making it wellsuited for data-intensive applications that require storage and I/O performance, like medical imagingand email servers.Keep pace with the explosion of data in the virtual age with the flexible I/O and storage capabilitiesof the R720 and R720xd. The R720 supports up to sixteen internal hard drives to increase yourcapacity, while optional hot-plug, front-access Express Flash PCIe solid-state drives (up to four)enable performance-enhancing, in-box storage tiering.The PowerEdge R720xd allows you to quickly access and process vast amounts of data with up totwenty-six internal hot-plug hard disks. The R720xd is a great solution for any mid-size or largebusiness that requires scalability in storage capacity.The R720 and R720xd allow you to tailor your network throughput to match your application needs,enabling added I/O performance. Select Network Adapters, Dell’s flexible NIC technology, let youchoose the right network fabric without using up a valuable PCI slot. You can pick speed,technology, vendor and other options, like switch independent partitioning (SIP) that lets you shareand manage bandwidth on 10GbE connections.Maximize your data center’s application capacity by expanding your virtual environment using thelarge memory footprint of the R720 and R720xd. Choose an industry-leading hypervisor and takeadvantage of our system management capability to manage both physical and virtual assets.Redundant failsafe hypervisors can also help maximize your virtual machines’ uptime. Dell’s VirtualIntegrated System (VIS) solution lets you enable complex virtualization environments in just a fewmouse clicks.The Dell OpenManage systems management portfolio includes the Integrated Dell Remote AccessController (iDRAC) with Lifecycle Controller. Dell embedded server management features help ITAdministrators manage Dell servers in physical, virtual, local and remote environments, operatingin-band or out-of-band, with or without a systems management software agent. OpenManage alsointegrates with and connects to third-party systems management solutions so you can maintainyour single point of control and capitalize on your existing investment. OpenManage solutions6PowerEdge R720 and R720xd Technical Guide

simplify the lifecycle of deploying, updating, monitoring, and maintaining your Dell PowerEdgeservers.New technologies featured on the PowerEdge R720 and R720xd systems are detailed in Table 1.New technologiesDetailed descriptionsIntel Xeon processorE5-2600 product familyThis new family of Intel processors has embedded PCIe lanes for improved I/Operformance. See the Processors section for details.Intel C600 series chipsetThe Intel Platform Controller Hub (PCH) chip is used on the R720 and R720xd.1600 MT/s DDR3memoryCertain models of E5-2600 series processors support 1600 MT/s memory. TheR720 and R720xd support two DIMMs per channel at 1600 MT/s with theseprocessors. See the Memory section for details.LRDIMMThis new memory option, load reduced DIMM (LRDIMM), is designed with a bufferchip (or chips) to replace the register to help minimize loading. LRDIMMs canincrease overall server system memory capacity and speed. See the Memorysection for more information.Flexible LOMDell’s Select Network Adapter options allow you to customize your LAN portcombinations from your choice of controller vendors. See the Networking andPCIe section for details.Next generation PERCoptionsThe R720 and R720xd support new PERC controller cards with improvedfunctionality and faster performance. See the Storage section for details.PERC S110 softwareRAID solutionThis new software RAID solution supports RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 and supports amaximum of four hot-plug SATA HDDs or SSDs. See the Storage section for details.Express Flash drives1Dell Express Flash PCIe solid-state drives provide fast performance withoutrequiring processor resources or capturing DRAM. The R720 supports up to fourExpress Flash drives. The R720xd does not support Express Flash drives.iDRAC7 with LifecycleControllerThe new embedded system management solution for Dell servers featureshardware and firmware inventory and alerting, in-depth memory alerting, fasterperformance, a dedicated gigabit port and many more features. See the DellOpenManage systems management section for details.Internal GPU supportThe R720 supports internal graphics processing units (GPUs) for extremecomputing power to solve high performance computing (HPC) needs. The R720xddoes not support internal GPUs. See the Processors section for details.Advanced powermanagementThe R720 and R720xd support advanced power monitoring and power cappingtools that can help manage power consumption.DC power supply1A new 1100W DC power supply option will be available for the R720 and R720xd.Failsafe hypervisorsThe internal dual SD module enables Dell's unique Failsafe Virtualizationarchitecture, ensuring uptime by providing failover capability for embedded hypervisors, such as VMware ESXi .Fresh air coolingDell has tested and validated an integrated data center solution that enables you tooperate at higher temperatures or even chiller-less. See the Power, thermal, andacoustics section for details.1Available Q2 20127PowerEdge R720 and R720xd Technical Guide