amazon Dell PowerEdge R430 reviews
Pros and cons of Dell PowerEdge R430 server
Advantages: space-saving design, powerful hardware package, high storage capacity, excellent remote management tools, very quiet.
Disadvantages: confusing storage options, the 10-bay model only supports SATA SFF
SMB seeks to maximize its valuable rack space like Dell’s PowerEdge R430. This 1U rack server can be 24in deep but is squeezed in a large hardware package including dual E5-2600 v3 CPUs, high memory capacity and plenty of storage options.
Dell Server provides us with base model kitted with 4 LFF drive bays by PERC S130 RAID embedded controller. Ordering at the point of sale, the R430 can be identified with up to 10 SFF drives and choosing the PCI-Express RAID card although as we see this process is not that simple.
Dell PowerEdge R430 server always has very good internal design, whisper cooling, quiet.
Dell’s iDRAC8 control provides quality server monitoring tools and handy power consumption graphs.
Storage capacity of Dell PowerEdge R430
The system considers 4 drives and each carrier cool-1TB LFF cable SATA directly to the motherboard’s SATA port via a fan-out cable. Entry-level system started with embedded PERC S130 controller support Support RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 arrays in software.
Hot-swap drives are supported by S130 but you will need to identify this backplane in the order phase. A dedicated expansion slot is also provided and you can choose from PERC H330, H730 and H730P snap-in cards that all support 12Gbps SAS drives with these two countries provide 1GB or 2GB of cache Flash supported.
It becomes more complicated as PERC card has 2 4-port connectors so it only supports upgrading of SAS SFF 8 drives. The 8-bay backplane also has a cut-out to allow a low-profile optical drive to be equipped in the front panel.
Contrary to some images on Dell’s website, 10-bay models only support SATA SFF drives where the backplane occupies all the available space in front of the server. It is a cable that connects all 4 motherboard SATA ports and cannot be used with optional PERC RAID cards.
Internal design of the Dell PowerEdge R430
The short depth of the frame makes the cooling design better and Dell has done it very well. The cooling system is handled by a bank in 6 cool-swap, dual-rotor fan in front of the board while the CPU socket and DIMM slot are covered by a removable plastic gas shroud.
The smooth airflow path through the frames means that the fans don’t need to work continuously and we found it in extremely quiet R430. The lid on the PSU slot gets a bit of warm air to the touch but as long as you leave some space on the server, this won’t be a problem.
Memory distribution is somewhat unusual as the 8 front slots are assigned to the first CPU socket while the second socket gets 4 slots. The main advantage here is that you can cut costs by identifying a single CPU and still upgrading to 256GB of memory.
The free OpenManage Essentials application provides network monitoring and alerting tools
Deployment capabilities and capabilities of the Dell PowerEdge R430
Dell’s embedded Lifecycle Controller softens the operating system deployment as we use it to install Windows Server 2012 R2 with all drivers within 30 minutes. It provides firmware upgrades, hardware diagnostics and devices to configure access and remote storage.
Dell iDRAC8 provides a wealth of remote management features. Along with electric controls, we can monitor graphs of power consumption and temperature but if you want to have full remote control, you will have to upgrade to the Enterprise version.
The server is powered with 2 Xeon E5-2603 chips 1.6GHz and redundant 550W Platinum PSU which proved to be easy on the power supply. With the idle operating system we measured an equalization of 85W which achieved only 132W position with CPU generation under extreme load from SiSoft Sandra benchmark applications.
Dell’s OMM iOS application allows us to keep a close eye on servers from the iPad.
Server management capabilities of Dell PowerEdge R430
The Dell OpenManage Server Administrator provides on-site web-based management and remote management installed on the server. OpenManage Essentials goes further by extending centralized management and alerts for all your SNMP and WMI-enabled systems.
where can you get a Dell PowerEdge R430 online
Dell PowerEdge R430 Server 1x E5-2603v4 1.7GHz 6C 8GB 1x 1TB 7.2K Cabled H330 (Certified Refurbished): Buy it now
Dell 463-7656 POWEREDGE R430 SVR E5-2620V4: Buy it now
Dell PowerEdge R430 2S/1U Rack Xeon E5-2620v4 1P 1x8GB 550W 1+0 8SFF-HP 1x300GB 10K SAS iDRAC8-E 3YR NBD: Buy it now
Dell PowerEdge R430 8-Bay SFF 1U Server, 2X E5-2603 V3 1.6GHz 6C, 64GB DDR4, 4X 1TB 7.2K SAS 2.5, PERC H330, iDRAC 8 Express, 2X 550W PSUs, Rails (Certified Refurbished): Buy it now
We are pleased to see Dell update its OpenManage Mobile (OMM) application with improved iOS support. We had problems with it when we reviewed the R730 as it refused to connect to the server’s iDRAC controller.
OMM version 1.0.2 addresses these issues, but after updating our application, we still cannot connect to the iDRAC of R430. We discussed this Dell and the workaround is to remove the application and do a fresh install from the App Store.
With this fixed, we can view important server signals from our OMM iPad applications which list details of CPU and memory installed with operating system versions. Hardware logs are provided for system events and lifecycle controllers, we can check on the firmware versions for all hardware components and see a machine health status master.
Technical specifications
Chassis: 1U rack
CPU: 2 x 1.6GHz Xeon E5-2603 v3
Memory: 48GB 1,600MHz DDR4 (maximum 384GB)
Storage: 4 1TB x Dell 7.2K SATA hard disks (maximum 10)
RAID: Dell PERC S130
Support array: Supported Array: RAID0, 1, 10, 5
Network: 4 x Gigabit
Expand: 2 x PCI-Express 3.0 slot
Capacity: 2 x 550W Platinum hot-swap PSU
Management: Dell iDRAC8 with enterprise upgrades
Review Dell PowerEdge R430
Dell’s confusing website ordering process and user guide make selecting the storage options a bit complicated, but the R430’s information is always accurate. Its compact chassis exudes strong technical features with good scalability and all at a price that will respond well to businesses and SMBs.