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PowerEdge R900 and S7000FC4UR: birds of a feather

The Dell PowerEdge got our attention, as the configuration specifications were remarkably similar to the Intel S7000FC4UR server we had in the lab. The power supplies seem to have the same electrical characteristics as the ones found in the S7000FC4UR. When we started to compare, we found more and more similarities. Just look at the rear of each server.

When you look inside the Dell PowerEdge, it is clear that the Dell PowerEdge R900 and Intel S7000FC4UR are siblings. Just compare the image below with the photo that we showed you of the inside of the Intel server a few pages back.

The way the CPUs are cooled, the layout of the board, the two pairs of rear fans, the memory modules... everything looks exactly the same. Only the arrangement at the front of the server is slightly different: hard disks are placed vertically instead of horizontally and the RAID card is positioned differently. The Dell PowerEdge is a slightly improved version of the slightly older Intel S7000FC4UR, so we are 99% sure that performance and power consumption will be very similar too.

That is not really a surprise, as this approach to server design is typical for Dell. Dell tries to keep costs as low as possible and reusing (part of) Intel's engineering is a smart way to do that. Dell's bread and butter is the mass market of dual socket servers, which is good for about 75% of x86 server revenue. To Dell it makes less sense to invest heavy engineering efforts in the much smaller four socket market (about 14% of the revenue of the server market).