This is the unusual 28-bay hybrid storage version of Dell's PowerEdge R730xd, and it's an exceptionally interesting platform for a serious homelab.
Instead of forcing you to choose between a flash-heavy virtualization server and a big-capacity media/NAS box, this chassis gives you room for both storage tiers in one 2U machine:
18 × front 1.8" SSD bays + 8 × front 3.5" LFF bays + 2 × rear 2.5" bays = 28 total drive positions.
The installed backplane identifies itself to the system as a 28-slot BP13G+EXP enclosure and currently reports Ready/OK.
This layout opens up some seriously fun possibilities for Proxmox, VMware, TrueNAS, Linux, virtualization labs, storage labs, media servers, and all-in-one infrastructure builds.
Populate those eighteen SSD positions with 18 × 960GB SSDs and you're looking at 17.28TB of raw flash capacity before RAID/filesystem overhead. That gives you an enormous fast-storage tier for VMs, containers, databases, application data, scratch space, game servers, or whatever else benefits from solid-state storage.
And unlike a conventional SFF R730xd, you haven't sacrificed your bulk storage to get it.
Underneath the SSD tier are eight full-size 3.5" LFF bays ready for large-capacity hard drives. That's where your Plex/Jellyfin library, backups, ISO collection, surveillance footage, archives, datasets, or other bulk storage can live.
Then there are still two rear 2.5" drive positions, which are ideal for dedicated boot drives. In a homelab build, that means you can potentially keep your operating system mirrored on the rear drives while preserving every single front bay for actual data.
That's what makes this chassis so appealing. You could build one machine with:
- Rear 2.5" tier: mirrored Proxmox / hypervisor / OS drives
- 18-bay SSD tier: high-speed VM, container, database, or application storage — 18 × 960GB would provide 17.28TB raw
- 8-bay LFF tier: large-capacity HDD storage for media, backups and archive data
You aren't buying eighteen SSDs or eight HDDs with this listing — all trays are empty and no drives are included — but you're buying the chassis architecture to build exactly that kind of system.
And the rest of the machine is already a very capable starting point.
It is configured with dual Intel Xeon E5-2680 v3 processors, giving you 24 physical cores / 48 threads total. Each processor is a 12-core / 24-thread part running at 2.50GHz, with Hyper-Threading and Intel virtualization support enabled.
Installed memory is 64GB ECC DDR4, currently configured as 2 × 32GB Samsung DIMMs. Even better for a homelabber planning to expand, the R730xd motherboard has 24 DIMM positions and only two are presently populated, leaving enormous room to grow.
Storage is handled by a Dell PERC H730 Mini with 1GB of cache, 12Gb/s capability, and a RAID battery that reports Ready/OK.
Networking is already homelab-friendly as well. The integrated daughter card provides 2 × 10Gb SFP+ ports plus 2 × 1Gb Ethernet ports, giving you fast connectivity for storage traffic, VM migration, backups, NAS duty, or general lab networking without immediately needing another NIC.
Power is supplied by dual redundant Dell 750W hot-swap power supplies, and both currently report healthy.
Remote management is provided by iDRAC8 Express.
Installed configuration:
Dell PowerEdge R730xd 2U
28-position hybrid storage chassis
18 × front 1.8" SSD positions
8 × front 3.5" LFF positions
2 × rear 2.5" positions
2 × Intel Xeon E5-2680 v3
24 cores / 48 threads total
64GB ECC DDR4
Dell PERC H730 Mini RAID controller with 1GB cache
2 × 10Gb SFP+ networking
2 × 1Gb Ethernet
2 × 750W redundant hot-swap PSUs
iDRAC8 Express
Drive trays/caddies shown included
NO DRIVES INCLUDED
There is one unusual item worth disclosing: the Service Tag sticker has been removed from the chassis pull tab, and no Service Tag is currently programmed into the system. iDRAC nevertheless correctly identifies the system as a Dell PowerEdge R730xd and reports the installed hardware normally.
This machine is being sold for what it is: a rare, tremendously flexible R730xd storage configuration with an absurd amount of drive-bay real estate.
If you've wanted to consolidate a virtualization host, fast SSD storage, and a large HDD media/archive pool into one enterprise 2U server, this is the R730xd chassis to do it with.
