Dell SMB Reference Configuration for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Fast Track Data Warehouse on
PowerEdge R720xd
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Dell PowerEdge R720xd Server
The Dell PowerEdge R720xd server is a 2-socket, 2U high-capacity, multi-purpose rack server offering
an excellent balance of internal storage, redundancy, and value in a compact chassis.
The PowerEdge R720xd server was developed with a purposeful design, energy-optimized options and
enterprise-class manageability. For more technical specifications of the R720xd Server, refer to the
Power Edge R720xd Technical Guide, a link to which is provided in the References section of this
document.
Processors
The Microsoft Fast Track 4.0 Reference Guide describes how to achieve a balance between components
such as storage, memory, and processors. In order to balance the available internal storage and
memory for the Dell PowerEdge R720xd, a single Intel Xeon E5-2643 four core processor operating at
3.3GHz speed was used.
Memory
For SQL 2012 reference architectures, Microsoft recommends using 64GB to 128GB of memory for one
socket configuration. With enough memory installed on the system, the large-scale queries involving
Hash joins and sorting operations will benefit from SQL Server offloading operations from the Tempdb
to Memory. Selection of memory DIMMS will also play a critical role in the performance of the entire
stack. In our test configuration, we have configured the database server with 96GB of RAM running at
1333 MHz speed.
To achieve 96GB of RAM on the PowerEdge R720xd server, four 8GB RDIMMS are placed on slots A1-A4
(white connectors) and four 16GB RDIMMS are placed on slots A5-A8 (black connectors). See the figure
below for memory slot locations.
Figure 2. Memory Slot Locations
