Dell External OEMR R520, PowerEdge R520 Technical Manual
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October 2012 | Version 2.0
Table of contents
1 System overview ..................................................................................................................................................................5
Introduction .........................................................................................................................................................................5
New technologies ............................................................................................................................................................. 6
2 System features ................................................................................................................................................................... 7
Comparison of PowerEdge systems ............................................................................................................................... 7
Specifications ..................................................................................................................................................................... 8
3 Chassis views and features ............................................................................................................................................. 10
Chassis views .................................................................................................................................................................... 10
Chassis features ................................................................................................................................................................ 12
4 Processor ............................................................................................................................................................................ 15
Processor features ............................................................................................................................................................ 15
Supported processors ...................................................................................................................................................... 15
Chipset ................................................................................................................................................................................ 16
5 Memory ............................................................................................................................................................................... 17
Supported memory .......................................................................................................................................................... 17
Memory configurations ...................................................................................................................................................18
Memory speed .................................................................................................................................................................. 19
Memory RAS features....................................................................................................................................................... 19
6 Storage ................................................................................................................................................................................ 21
Internal storage ................................................................................................................................................................. 21
External storage ............................................................................................................................................................... 22
Storage controllers .......................................................................................................................................................... 22
Optical drive ..................................................................................................................................................................... 23
Tape drive .......................................................................................................................................................................... 23
7 Networking and PCIe ...................................................................................................................................................... 24
Embedded NIC controller .............................................................................................................................................. 24
PCIe expansion ................................................................................................................................................................ 24
8 Power, thermal, and acoustics ...................................................................................................................................... 26
Power consumption and energy efficiency ................................................................................................................ 26
Power supply units .......................................................................................................................................................... 27
Thermal and acoustics.................................................................................................................................................... 28
9 Rack rails and cable management ................................................................................................................................. 31
Sliding and static rail systems ......................................................................................................................................... 31
Cable management arm................................................................................................................................................. 33
10 Operating systems and virtualization ........................................................................................................................... 34
Supported operating systems ........................................................................................................................................ 34
Supported virtualization ................................................................................................................................................. 35
11 Dell OpenManage systems management .................................................................................................................... 36
Systems management solutions ................................................................................................................................... 36
OpenManage systems management ........................................................................................................................... 37
Dell server management operations ............................................................................................................................ 42
Appendix A. Additional specifications .......................................................................................................................... 44
Chassis dimensions ......................................................................................................................................................... 44
Chassis weight.................................................................................................................................................................. 44
Power supply specifications .......................................................................................................................................... 45
Environmental specifications ........................................................................................................................................ 45
Video specifications ........................................................................................................................................................ 46
Rack rail specifications ................................................................................................................................................... 47
USB peripherals ................................................................................................................................................................ 47
Appendix B. Standards compliance ............................................................................................................................. 48
Appendix C. Additional resources ................................................................................................................................. 49
Appendix D. System board block diagram ................................................................................................................... 51
Table 1. New technologies ................................................................................................................................................ 6
Table 2. Comparing the PowerEdge R510 to PowerEdge R520 .................................................................................. 7
Table 3. Technical specifications ...................................................................................................................................... 8
Table 4. Chassis features ................................................................................................................................................... 12
Table 5. Security features .................................................................................................................................................. 13
Table 6. Supported processors ........................................................................................................................................ 16
Table 7. Memory technologies supported ..................................................................................................................... 17
Table 8. DIMMs supported ................................................................................................................................................18
Table 9. Memory speed capabilities ................................................................................................................................ 19
Table 10. Memory RAS features ........................................................................................................................................ 20
Table 11. Supported hard drives ........................................................................................................................................ 21
Table 12. Supported RAID controllers.............................................................................................................................. 22
Table 13. PCIe slot configurations .................................................................................................................................... 24
Table 14. Supported NICs and HBAs ................................................................................................................................ 25
Table 15. Power tools and technologies ......................................................................................................................... 26
Table 16. Power supply efficiency .................................................................................................................................... 28
Table 17. Acoustical performance .................................................................................................................................... 30
Table 18. Supported rack types ......................................................................................................................................... 32
Table 19. Primary operating system support .................................................................................................................. 34
Table 20. Virtualization support ........................................................................................................................................ 35
Table 21. iDRAC7 with Lifecycle Controller functions and benefits ........................................................................... 37
Table 22. Feature comparison for basic management, iDRAC7 Express, and iDRAC7 Enterprise ....................... 38
Table 23. One-to-one and one-to-many operations .................................................................................................. 43
Table 24. Power supply specifications ............................................................................................................................. 45
Table 25. Environmental specifications ........................................................................................................................... 45
Table 26. Supported video modes .................................................................................................................................... 46
Table 27. Rail adjustability range ....................................................................................................................................... 47
Table 28. Industry standard documents .......................................................................................................................... 48
Table 29. Additional resources .......................................................................................................................................... 49
Figure 1. Front view without bezel .................................................................................................................................. 10
Figure 2. Front view with bezel......................................................................................................................................... 10
Figure 3. Back view .............................................................................................................................................................. 11
Figure 4. Internal view ......................................................................................................................................................... 11
Figure 5. LCD control panel ............................................................................................................................................... 13
Figure 6. QRL location ........................................................................................................................................................ 13
Figure 7. 750W power supply unit ................................................................................................................................... 28
Figure 8. Sliding rails with optional CMA ......................................................................................................................... 31
Figure 9. Static rails ............................................................................................................................................................. 32
Figure 10. Dell systems management solutions .............................................................................................................. 36
Figure 11. Systems management server lifecycle ........................................................................................................... 42
Figure 12. System dimensions ............................................................................................................................................ 44
Figure 13. R520 system board block diagram .................................................................................................................. 51
The Dell™ PowerEdge™ R520 is a 2-socket, 2U rack-mount server offering an excellent balance of
processing power, storage capacity, and redundancy. The R520’s price per performance,
configuration flexibility, and headroom for growth make it highly appealing for consolidation and
virtualization, web serving and hosting, departmental database applications such as Business
Analytics, and a wide range of general purpose collaboration and productivity applications.
The extensive memory, storage, and I/O capacities of the R520 make it ideal for consolidation and
virtualization. Delivering the performance of two Intel
®
Xeon® E5-2400 processors and
complemented by up to twelve DIMMs, up to four PCI Express® (PCIe) 3.0-enabled slots, and up to
eight internal hard drives, the R520 delivers powerful, balanced performance. With built-in
redundancy features, the R520 is a trustworthy platform for your business-critical databases and
applications. The dense rack form factor and innovative systems management of the R520 allow you
to save space and to use your IT administrator’s time efficiently.
Features that protect your business data and keep the server running are essential. The extensive
storage capacity of the R520 can be protected with both hardware RAID controllers and software
solutions to protect your data and ensure that it is readily available. Built-in reliability, availability, and
serviceability (RAS) features such as hot-pluggable hard drives and power supplies minimize the
need to disrupt production work to take a server offline in the event of a component failure.
Redundant, failsafe hypervisors also add an additional layer of protection for virtualized
environments.
The PowerEdge family is engineered with the right combination of features and performance
scalability to handle tough workloads for both large and small data center environments.
The Dell OpenManage™ systems management portfolio includes Integrated Dell Remote Access
Controller 7 (iDRAC7) with Lifecycle Controller. This embedded feature helps IT administrators
manage Dell servers in physical, virtual, local and remote environments, operating in-band or outof-band, with or without a systems management software agent. OpenManage also integrates and
connects to leading third-party systems management solutions you may already own, so you can
maintain your single point of control and capitalize on your existing investment. OpenManage
simplifies the lifecycle of deploying, updating, monitoring, and maintaining your Dell PowerEdge
servers.
Table 1 summarizes the newest technologies used in the Dell PowerEdge R520 rack server.
New technologies
Detailed descriptions
Intel Xeon processor
E5-2400 product family
This new family of Intel processors has embedded PCIe lanes for improved I/O
performance. See the Processor section for details.
Intel C600 series chipset
The Intel Platform Controller Hub (PCH) chip is implemented on the R520 server.
1600MT/s DDR3
memory
Certain models of the Intel Xeon processor E5-2400 product family support
1600MT/s memory. The R520 supports two DIMMs per channel at 1600MT/s with
certain models. See the Memory section for details.
Next generation PERC
options
The R520 supports the new PERC controller cards with improved functionality and
faster performance. See the Storage section for details.
PERC S110 software
RAID Solution
This new software RAID solution supports RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10, and supports a
maximum of four hot-plug SATA hard drives or SATA solid-state drives. See the
Storage section for details.
iDRAC7 with Lifecycle
Controller
The new embedded system management solution for Dell servers features
hardware and firmware inventory and alerting, in-depth memory alerting, faster
performance, a dedicated gigabit port, and many more features. See the Dell
OpenManage systems management section for details.
DC power supply
A new 1100W DC power supply option is available for the R520. See the Power,
thermal, and acoustics section for details.
Advanced power
management
The R520 supports advanced power monitoring and power capping tools that can
help manage power consumption. See the Power, thermal, and acoustics section
for details.
Fresh Air cooling
Dell has tested and validated an integrated data center solution that enables you
to operate at higher temperatures or even chiller-less. See the Power, thermal, and
acoustics section for details.
Failsafe hypervisors
The internal dual SD module enables Dell's unique Failsafe Virtualization
architecture, ensuring uptime by providing failover capability for embedded
hypervisors, such as VMware® vSphere® ESXi™. See the Supported virtualization
section.
Fan fault tolerance
Failure of one fan motor is tolerated with degradation in performance through
active throttling and increased fan speeds. The feature helps reduce downtime by
allowing you to schedule a fan replacement within 360 hours of a fan failure.
Feature
PowerEdge R510
PowerEdge R520
Chassis
2U rack
2U rack
Processors
Intel Xeon processors 5500 and
5600 series
Intel Xeon processor E5-2400 product
family
Internal interconnect
Intel QuickPath Interconnect
Intel QuickPath Interconnect
Memory
1
8 x DDR3 RDIMM and UDIMM
Up to 128GB
12 x DDR3 RDIMM and UDIMM
Up to 384GB
Hard drive bays
(hot-plug)
Up to 12 x 3.5” or 2.5” SAS/SATA
SSD
Up to 8 x 3.5” or 2.5” SAS/SATA SSD
RAID controller
PERC H200, H700, H800
PERC H310, H710, H710P, H810
PCI slots
3 PCIe 2.0 slots
4 PCIe 3.0 slots (with two processors)
Embedded NIC
1 x 1GbE Dual Port LOM
1 x 1GbE Dual Port LOM
Power supplies
Non-redundant 480W AC
Hot-plug, redundant and
non-redundant 750W AC
Cabled 550W AC
Hot-plug, redundant 495W AC, 750W AC,
1100W AC, 1100W DC
Dell OpenManage
Systems Management
Dell OpenManage
Dell Management Console (DMC)
Lifecycle Controller 1.x
iDRAC6 (Express or Enterprise) with
Lifecycle Controller
OpenManage Essentials
Dell Management Console
IT Assistant
OMSA Agent
OpenManage Power Center (requires
iDRAC7 Enterprise with Lifecycle
Controller)
OpenManage Integrations and
Connections
Basic management (standard option)
Power efficiency
Gold
Titanium
Availability
Hot-plug drives
Hot-plug redundant cooling on
12-hard drive configuration
Hot-plug redundant power supply
units
Hot-plug drives
Fan fault tolerance
Hot-plug redundant power supply units
Internal dual SD module
Compared to its predecessor, the R520 supports more PCIe slots, PCIe 3.0, more memory, and
advanced systems management. Table 2 compares some of the features of the R520 to its R510
predecessor. Table 3 lists all of the R520’s specifications.
The R520 is the new generation PowerEdge server replacing the R510. Table 2 compares some of
the R520 features to the R510 features.
1
GB means 1 billion bytes and TB equals 1 trillion bytes; actual capacity varies with preloaded material and operating environment and will
be less.
Table 3 summarizes the specifications for each of the PowerEdge R520 features. For the latest
Feature
PowerEdge R520 technical specification
Form factor
2U rack
Processors
Intel Xeon processor E5-2400 product family
Processor sockets
2 sockets
Internal interconnect
1 Intel QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) link: 6.4GT/s, 7.2GT/s, 8.0GT/s
Cache
2.5MB per core with core options of 4, 6, or 8
Chipset
Intel C600
Memory1
Up to 384GB (12 DIMM slots): 2GB/4GB/8GB/16GB/32GB DDR3 up to 1600MT/s
PCIe slots
3 PCIe slots + 1 storage slot for mini type PERC:
With 2 processors:
1 x16 slot with x16 bandwidth, 3.0, half-height, half-length
1 x16 slot with x8 bandwidth, 3.0, full-height, full-length
2 x16 slots with x8 bandwidth, 3.0, full-height, half-length
With 1 processor:
1 x8 slot with x4 bandwidth, 2.0, half-height, half-length
1 x16 slot with x8 bandwidth, 3.0, full-height, full-length
2 x8 slots with x4 bandwidth, 3.0, full-height, half-length
RAID controller
Internal controllers:
PERC S110 (SW RAID)
PERC H310
PERC H710
PERC H710P
External HBAs (RAID):
PERC H810
External HBAs (non-RAID):
6Gbps SAS HBA
Hard drives
(hot-plug)
Drive bay options:
Up to 8 x 3.5-inch hot-plug drive bays
Hard drive options:
3.5-inch SAS (15K), nearline SAS (7.2K), SATA (7.2K)
2.5-inch SAS (15K, 10K), SAS SSD (SLC), SATA SSD (MLC); requires 3.5-inch hybrid tray
Self-encrypting drives (SEDs) available
Embedded NIC
Broadcom® 5720 Dual Port 1GbE
Power supply
Auto-ranging, Titanium efficiency, hot-plug, redundant 750W AC power supply
Auto-ranging, Platinum efficiency, hot-plug, redundant 495W, 750W or 1100W AC
power supply
Silver efficiency, cabled 550W AC power supply
Hot-plug, redundant 1100W DC power supply
information on supported features for the PowerEdge R520, visit Dell.com.
Feature
PowerEdge R520 technical specification
Availability
High-efficiency, hot-plug, redundant power supplies; DC power supply, hot-plug hard
drives; TPM; dual internal SD support; fan fault tolerance; optional bezel; information
tag; ECC memory; interactive LCD screen; extended power range; ENERGY STAR®
compliant; switch independent partitioning
Dell OpenManage
Systems Management
(Agent-free or with
OpenManage Server
Administrator [OMSA]
Agent)
OpenManage Essentials
Dell Management Console
IT Assistant
OMSA Agent
OpenManage Power Center (requires iDRAC7 Enterprise with Lifecycle
Controller)
OpenManage Integrations and Connections:
- OpenManage Integration Suite for Microsoft
®
System Center
- Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter™
- Connections for HP
®
Operations Manager, IBM® Tivoli® Netcool® and CA
Network and Systems Management
Basic management (standard option)
- Upgrade to iDRAC7 (Express or Enterprise) with Lifecycle Controller
- Upgrade to 8GB vFlash media or 16GB vFlash media for iDRAC7 Enterprise
with Lifecycle Controller
- Trial evaluations available for IDRAC7 (Express and Enterprise) with Lifecycle
Controller
Rack support
ReadyRails™ II sliding rails for tool-less mounting in 4-post racks with square or
unthreaded round holes or tooled mounting in 4-post threaded hole racks, with
support for optional tool-less cable management arm
ReadyRails static rails for tool-less mounting in 4-post racks with square or
unthreaded round holes or tooled mounting in 4-post threaded and 2-post (Telco)
racks
Operating systems
Microsoft Windows Server® 2012
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, x64 (includes Hyper-V® v2)
Microsoft Windows® Small Business Server 2011
SUSE® Linux® Enterprise Server
Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®
Optional embedded hypervisors:
Citrix® XenServer®
VMware vSphere including ESX™ and ESXi
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization
®
For more information on the specific versions and additions, visit
Dell.com/OSsupport.
1
GB means 1 billion bytes and TB equals 1 trillion bytes; actual capacity varies with preloaded material and operating environment and will
be less.
The Dell PowerEdge R520 is a 2U, 2-socket rack server. For additional system views and features,
see the
Figure 1 shows the features on the front of the R520 chassis including eight 3.5-inch hard drives,
front control panel, USB connectors, and many other components and features described in this
guide.
Figure 2 shows the optional lockable bezel on the front of the R520 chassis.
Dell PowerEdge R520 Systems Owner’s Manual
on Support.Dell.com/Manuals.
Figure 3 shows the features on the back panel of the R520 including USB connectors, Ethernet
connectors, serial connector, video connector, PCIe slots, power supplies, and many other
components and features described in this guide.
The chassis design of the R520 is optimized for easy access to components and for airflow for
effective and efficient cooling. The R520 supports up to 12 DIMMs, 2 processors, hot-plug
redundant power supplies, and many other components and features described in this guide.
Table 4 lists the features on the R520 chassis. For additional information, see the
Feature
Description
Power button
ACPI-compliant power button with an integrated green power LED
Front bezel
Covers the system’s front-loading hard drives and locks for security
NMI button
Used to troubleshoot software and device driver errors; use only if directed
to do so by qualified support personnel or by the operating system's
documentation
System identification button
Buttons on the back and front of a system to help identify the unit in a data
center environment
Hard drives
Up to eight 3.5-inch drives
USB connectors
Connects USB devices to the server
Information tag
Slide-out label panel for recording system information
Video connector
Connects a monitor to the server
LCD panel and buttons
Displays system ID, status information, and system error messages; two
navigation buttons to scroll through the menu on the LCD and one select
button
Optical drive
Optional slim DVD or DVD+RW drive
Power supply units
Supplies power to the server
Power supply indicators
Indicates whether server has power
NIC indicators
Indicates network activity and status
PCIe slots
Connects PCIe expansion cards to the server
Ethernet connectors
Connects integrated 10/100/1000 NICs to the server
Serial connector
Connects a serial device to the server
iDRAC7 Enterprise port
Dedicated management port for optional iDRAC card
R520 Systems Owner’s Manual
on Support.Dell.com/Manuals.
Dell PowerEdge
The R520 control panel is located on the front of the chassis as shown in Figure 5. For more
information about the LCD control panel, see the
Dell PowerEdge R520 Systems Owner’s Manual
Support.Dell.com/Manuals.
on
Security feature
Description
Cover latch
A tooled latch is integrated on the top cover with a coin key lock to secure the
system.
Bezel
An optional metal bezel is mounted to the chassis front to provide the Dell ID. A
lock on the bezel is used to protect un-authorized access to hard drives. System
status is viewable on the LCD screen when the bezel is installed.
A useful feature included with Dell PowerEdge 12th generation servers is the Quick Resource Locator
(QRL)—a model-specific Quick Response (QR) code that is located inside the R520 chassis cover
(see Figure 6). Use your smartphone to access the Dell QRL app to learn more about the server.
This QRL code allows you to:
View step-by-step videos, including overviews of system internals and externals, as well as
detailed, concise, task-oriented videos and installation wizards
Locate reference materials, including searchable owner’s manual content, LCD diagnostics, and
an electrical overview
Look up your service tag so you can quickly gain access to your specific hardware configuration
info and warranty information
Contact Dell directly (by link) to get in touch with technical support and sales teams and provide
feedback to Dell
These codes provide an easy way to retrieve the critical support information you need when you
need it, making you more efficient and effective in managing your hardware.
The latest generation of PowerEdge servers has the features listed in Table 5 to help ensure the
security of your data center.
Security feature
Description
TPM
The Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is used to generate/store keys,
protect/authenticate passwords, and create/store digital certificates. It also
supports the Intel Xeon TXT functionality. TPM can also be used to enable the
BitLocker™ hard drive encryption feature in Windows Server 2008. TPM 1.2 is
supported. No TPM version is available for China or Russia.
Power-off security
BIOS has the ability to disable the power button function.
Intrusion alert
An internal switch is used to detect chassis intrusion.
Secure mode
BIOS has the ability to enter a secure boot mode through system setup. This
mode includes the option to lock out the power and NMI switches on the
control panel or set up a system password.
The Dell PowerEdge R520 features the Intel Xeon processor E5-2400 product family, which offers
an ideal combination of performance, power efficiency, and cost. These processors provide high
performance no matter what your constraint is—floor space, power, or budget—and on workloads
that range from the most complicated scientific exploration to crucial web-serving and
infrastructure applications. In addition to providing raw performance gains, improved I/O is also
made possible with Intel Integrated I/O, which can reduce latency by adding more lanes and
doubling bandwidth. This helps to reduce network and storage bottlenecks, unleashing the
processor’s performance capabilities.
The new Intel Xeon processor E5-2400 product family provides the following features:
2-socket processor design with power and dimensions optimized for density
Up to 8 execution cores per processor
Intel Hyper-Threading technology enables up to 16 computational threads
Micro-architecture on 32nm process for greater performance per watt
Support for more memory—4 additional DIMMs (up to 12 DIMM slots) and support for up to
32GB DIMMs increasing the memory capacity from 128GB to 384GB
Integrated memory controller with 3 channels of DDR3 and 46-bit physical addressing facilitate
greater memory capacity
Intel Integrated I/O has support for up to 48 lanes (24 lanes per socket) of PCIe 3.0 links capable
of 8.0GT/s
Faster connections throughout the system with support for DDR3 1600MT/s memory and
8.0GT/s QPI
Intel Data Direct I/O (DDIO) allows I/O traffic to skip the main system memory and be directed
straight to the processor cache, which can provide a significant reduction in latency as well as
allowing memory to remain in a low-power state
High bandwidth, low latency, bidirectional ring interconnect allows faster access to the 20MB
multi-banked last level cache
Intel Advanced Vector Extensions offer up to double the floating point operations per clock
cycle by doubling the length of registers, which can be useful for addressing very complex
problems or dealing with large-number calculations, which are integral to many technical,
financial, and scientific computing problems
Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0, which allows processor cores to run faster than the base
operating frequency if it's operating below power, current, and temperature specification limits,
delivers up to double the boost than the previous generation
Continued improvements to both Intel TXT and AES-NI help to better protect systems and data
For more information on the Intel Xeon processor E5-2400 product family, visit Intel.com.
Table 6 lists the Intel Xeon processors supported by the PowerEdge R520. For the latest information
on supported processors, visit Dell.com/PowerEdge.
Model
Speed
TDP
Cache
Cores/
threads
QPI
Turbo
E5-2470
2.3GHz
95W
20MB
8/16
8.0GT/s
Yes
E5-2450L
1.8GHz
70W
20MB
8/16
8.0GT/s
Yes
E5-2450
2.1GHz
95W
20MB
8/16
8.0GT/s
Yes
E5-2440
2.4GHz
95W
15MB
6/12
7.2GT/s
Yes
E5-2430L
2.0GHz
60W
15MB
6/12
7.2GT/s
Yes
E5-2430
2.2GHz
95W
15MB
6/12
7.2GT/s
Yes
E5-2420
1.9GHz
95W
15MB
6/12
7.2GT/s
Yes
E5-2407
2.2GHz
80W
10MB
4/8
6.4GT/s
No
E5-2403
1.8GHz
80W
10MB
4/8
6.4GT/s
No
For information on processor installation and configuration, see the
Owner’s Manual
on Support.Dell.com/Manuals.
Dell PowerEdge R520 Systems
The Intel C600 chipset is implemented on the PowerEdge R520. For more information, visit
Intel.com.
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