The Dell PowerEdge R740xd 2U 12-Bay LFF with 2-Bay LFF Flex Bay is a professionally refurbished dual-socket rack server that hits a sweet spot a lot of storage teams are looking for: big 3.5" drives, a generous bay count, dual Xeon Scalable compute, and the whole thing fits in 2U. If your workload is less about raw IOPS and more about putting serious capacity in the rack without sacrificing the processing power to do something useful with it, this is the configuration worth looking at. The flex bay adds two more rear-accessible 3.5" slots on top of the 12 up front — a small detail that ends up mattering when you're trying to squeeze every terabyte you can out of a tight rack.
Processing is handled by up to two Intel Xeon Scalable processors (1st and 2nd Gen), with options running from entry-level Silver 4110s all the way up to Platinum 8270s with 26 cores apiece. The short version on memory: 24 DDR4 DIMM slots, up to 3TB, with speed options at 2400, 2666, and 2933MHz. On the storage side, all 12 front LFF bays plus both rear flex bays support 3.5" SAS and SATA drives — spinning HDDs up to 26TB each, or SAS/SATA SSDs if you need a flash tier. Trays with 2.5" adapters are also available if you want to mix in smaller drives.
This is a workhorse platform that thrives in environments like:
- High-capacity NAS and file servers — twelve 3.5" front bays plus two rear flex bays means you can stack multi-terabyte drives and build out substantial usable storage without leaving the 2U range.
- Backup and archival targets — large-format spinning drives at 10TB, 22TB, or 26TB per bay make this a practical destination for backup jobs that need long-term retention on a budget.
- Surveillance and video storage — sequential write-heavy workloads pair well with high-capacity SAS/SATA HDDs, and the dual-socket platform gives you enough CPU to handle indexing and management tasks alongside storage.
- Software-defined storage nodes — the R740xd is a recognized platform for Ceph, vSAN, and similar SDS deployments; the LFF chassis is the right choice when raw capacity per node is the priority over drive speed.
- Virtualization hosts with large local datastores — teams running workloads that need both compute resources and locally attached bulk storage will find this configuration covers both without the need for external storage arrays.
- Media production and rendering storage — production environments managing large video files or rendered assets need capacity and throughput; 14 bays of large-format drives handles the volume.
Power is covered by dual hot-swap redundant PSUs, configurable as 750W Platinum, 750W Titanium, or 1100W, so a single supply going down isn't going to take the system with it. Remote management is via iDRAC9 with Lifecycle Controller — out-of-band access, health monitoring, and firmware management, all without needing to be in the same room as the machine. Security-minded shops can add a TPM 2.0 module as a configuration option, and the platform supports Dell's full Secure Boot and system lockdown capabilities.
Every unit we sell is a professionally refurbished server — pulled from an enterprise data center, fully tested, and configured to your exact specs before it ships. You're getting name-brand Dell hardware that was running real production workloads, now available at a substantial discount over new pricing, with a 90-day warranty included.
At The Server Store, we don't just sell refurbished Dell PowerEdge R740xd servers — we configure them, test them, and make sure you're getting exactly the system you need. Our team is available by phone or chat whenever you need us. Browse our full selection of professionally refurbished, custom-configured servers and IT equipment at The Server Store.
