Unsolved
6 Posts
5
9757
PowerEdge T40 - a step in the wrong direction.
I use a number of Dell PowerEdge small servers (PE T20's and T30's) in my environment. Lots of bang for the buck, able to expand the storage and memory to as many as 6 hard drives, and 64 GB of RAM (in the case of the T30).
Now I see that Dell has released a PowerEdge T40 with a newer, faster Xeon CPU and support for Intel's VROC technology.
However, the PE T40 is a step in the wrong direction as far as I'm concerned. It only includes the ability to mount up to 3 hard drives and the Intel VROC support is nothing more than a renamed Intel Rapid Storage Technology SATA RAID driver. Nothing new here. Dell needs to update their online documentation to indicate that the VROC support is for SATA drives only and not for NVMe drives as indicated by Intel:
and that's not all. Where the PE T30 included SATA cables and blue plastic drive mounting cages for 4 drives as part of the base package, the PE T40 omits the SATA cables and blue plastic drive mounting cages for all but the single drive that the system ships with. The worst part is that Dell does not allow you to purchased the SATA cables or the proprietary blue plastic drive cages for the T40 anywhere on their website. If you call them about these parts they don't have any idea what you're talking about.
Way to go Dell. You'll end up frustrating and alienating your customers because you couldn't include about $3 worth of parts in a basic configuration.
Conclusion - Don't buy the PowerEdge T40. Stick with the PE T-30. You'll be much happier with the T-30.
nullpointerexc
2 Posts
3
December 9th, 2019 19:00
Completely AGREE!!! I just purchased a T40 for a small business server and was frustrated when I found out that the blue caddies weren't included (the SATA cables are easy and cheap to come by but the caddies are unique to dell). I tried calling support and was told that they didn't have any information on those parts for the machine and tried to sell me a refurbished T40 (not sure why...). It should have the caddies included at a minimum and ideally at least space for 4 drives (it is a server anyway).
I hope they fix this in a revision soon and try to make it right for customers that have already purchased. I was going to try to call support one more time later this week and if no luck return the server and look elsewhere.
lpang
1 Message
3
December 15th, 2019 10:00
I just received my T40 and saw this. I can't believe it, what a joke.
witenoize
4 Posts
2
January 3rd, 2020 14:00
I called and emailed and after much hemming and hawing they actually sent me two blue plastic caddies for free.
Note that they DON'T sell them at any price. And no, none of my numerous other Dell plastic caddies from other XPS and Optiplex PC's will fit in this machine (why did they need to keep changing the design of these things)?
Anyone that buys this machine, please let Dell know how idiotic their decision making was on this one.
This is truly Apple-like in their deliberate crippling of the hardware expansion (no BIOS NVMe support, no additional drives, etc) in order to push buyers to purchase higher-end models.
JustAnotherDellCustomer
1 Message
1
January 9th, 2020 18:00
Please provide the part numbers for the blue plastic caddies.
chucko6
6 Posts
3
January 10th, 2020 09:00
grantfrancisuk
1 Message
2
July 17th, 2020 09:00
Erm.. you don't need a caddy. Look closely at the HDD bays, the cages can be removed (2 x screws) and there are various mounting holes. Simply slide in your HDD and use M3 1/4" screws to hold in place. Use the holes in the face of the HDD, rather than the side as you might be used to.
speeddell
1 Message
0
September 5th, 2023 18:20
A 3-D printable Small Form Factor (SFF) 3.5" caddy that fits the T40 cage perfectly:
https://www.printables.com/model/355814