Dell PowerEdge R630 Servers

Chassis options

Two front-bay layouts were common. Both are 2.5-inch only; the R630 has no 3.5-inch option, which is one reason to look at the R730 for bulk storage.

Processors

The R630 takes Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3 (Haswell-EP) and v4 (Broadwell-EP) processors in two LGA2011-3 sockets, up to 22 cores per socket on v4. Both CPUs must be identical. A v3 system can be upgraded to v4 with a BIOS update, which is a cheap way to move an older unit to faster memory. Every complete unit we stock today runs v4 processors.

Xeon E5-2600 v4 (Broadwell-EP)

Xeon E5-2600 v3 (Haswell-EP)

The E5-2620 v4 and E5-2680 v4 are the two to know: the first is the budget dual-socket choice with 16 cores in total, the second gives 28 cores and 2400 MT/s memory for a modest premium. Both are in stock in Doha.

Memory

Twenty-four DDR4 DIMM slots, twelve per processor across four channels. Registered (RDIMM) and load-reduced (LRDIMM) modules are supported but cannot be mixed. With a single CPU only twelve slots are active.

Memory speed is set by the processor: 2133 MT/s on v3 and up to 2400 MT/s on v4, dropping to 1866 MT/s when three DIMMs per channel are populated. For the best balance populate four or eight DIMMs per CPU. Because the R630 uses standard DDR4 RDIMMs, upgrades are among the cheapest of any server we sell.

Storage and RAID

All backplanes are hot-plug 12 Gb/s SAS. Controller options:

Drives use the Dell 13th-generation 2.5" caddy, which is the same tray as the R730, R730xd and R430 but not the 14th-generation part. 10K SAS drives from 600 GB to 2.4 TB and SATA SSDs from 480 GB to 1.92 TB are the usual fills, and we keep both on the shelf.

Networking and expansion

Onboard networking is a Network Daughter Card. Common options:

• Broadcom 5720 or Intel I350 quad-port 1 GbE
• Intel X520 dual-port 10 GbE SFP+ plus I350 dual-port 1 GbE
• Intel X540 dual-port 10 GbE BASE-T plus I350 dual-port 1 GbE
• QLogic 57800 dual-port 10 GbE plus dual-port 1 GbE

Expansion is up to three PCIe 3.0 slots depending on the riser configuration: typically one full-height and two low-profile, or three low-profile. That covers a Fibre Channel HBA and a second network adapter. GPUs are not an option in this chassis.

Power supplies

Two hot-plug redundant bays, 1+1. Options are 495 W, 750 W and 1100 W, with the 750 W Platinum being the common fit. A dual-CPU R630 with ten drives draws well under 500 W at load, so the 750 W pair leaves ample headroom and the 1100 W is rarely needed.

Management

The R630 ships with iDRAC8 and the Lifecycle Controller. Express covers power control, health and alerts; Enterprise adds the virtual console, virtual media and remote firmware updates. iDRAC8 is a generation behind the R640's iDRAC9 in interface and API, but for day-to-day remote management the difference is small. The iDRAC8 web interface uses HTML5 in later firmware, so no Java is required.

Physical specification

Supported operating systems

The R630 is on the certified hardware lists for:

• Windows Server 2012 R2, 2016 and 2019
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, 7 and 8
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 and 12
• Ubuntu Server 16.04 and 18.04 LTS
• VMware ESXi 6.0, 6.5, 6.7 and 7.0 (7.0 requires v4 processors; ESXi 8 is not supported on 13th-generation PowerEdge)
• Citrix XenServer 7

Windows Server 2022 and current Linux releases install and run on the R630 but are outside Dell's support matrix. For a production hypervisor on this platform, ESXi 6.7 or 7.0 with v4 processors is the sensible ceiling.

Buying a refurbished R630 from ServerDove

Every unit we sell has been through full hardware diagnostics and a burn-in run: memory tested across every installed DIMM, controller and drive health verified, both power supplies load-tested, and the iDRAC reset and confirmed reachable. BIOS is returned to defaults and the firmware brought to a stable release. Units carry a six-month warranty and are held in Doha, so a replacement part is a short drive away rather than a shipment from overseas.

Because the R630 is past its manufacturer support window, we are also the practical route to keeping one in service: we stock the caddies, PERC cards, NDCs, power supplies and rail kits that fit it, and our hardware support plans cover units bought elsewhere as well as our own.

If you need a specific configuration that is not listed, tell us the CPU, memory and drive layout you want and we will quote a build from stock. Custom configurations are usually ready within two working days.