Dell External OEM Ready T420 Quick start guide

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October 2012 | Version 2.0

Table of contents
1System overview..................................................................................................................................................................5
Introduction.........................................................................................................................................................................5
New technologies ............................................................................................................................................................. 6
2System features ...................................................................................................................................................................7
Comparison of PowerEdge systems ...............................................................................................................................7
Specifications ..................................................................................................................................................................... 8
3Chassis views and features ..............................................................................................................................................11
Chassis views..................................................................................................................................................................... 11
Chassis features ................................................................................................................................................................14
4Processor............................................................................................................................................................................17
Processor features............................................................................................................................................................17
Supported processors......................................................................................................................................................17
GPU support ......................................................................................................................................................................18
Chipset................................................................................................................................................................................18
5Memory...............................................................................................................................................................................19
Supported memory ..........................................................................................................................................................19
Memory configurations .................................................................................................................................................. 20
Memory speed ..................................................................................................................................................................21
Memory RAS features.......................................................................................................................................................21
6Storage ............................................................................................................................................................................... 23
Internal storage ................................................................................................................................................................ 23
External storage ............................................................................................................................................................... 23
Storage controllers.......................................................................................................................................................... 24
Optical drive ..................................................................................................................................................................... 25
Tape drive.......................................................................................................................................................................... 25
7Networking and PCIe ...................................................................................................................................................... 26
Embedded NIC controller.............................................................................................................................................. 26
PCIe expansion ................................................................................................................................................................ 26
8Power, thermal, and acoustics ...................................................................................................................................... 28
Power consumption and energy efficiency................................................................................................................ 28
Power supply units .......................................................................................................................................................... 29
Thermal and acoustics.................................................................................................................................................... 30
9Rack rails and cable management ................................................................................................................................ 33
Sliding rails ........................................................................................................................................................................ 33
Cable management arm................................................................................................................................................. 34
10 Operating systems and virtualization ........................................................................................................................... 35
Supported operating systems........................................................................................................................................ 35
Supported virtualization ................................................................................................................................................. 36
11 Dell OpenManage systems management.................................................................................................................... 36
Systems management solutions ................................................................................................................................... 37
OpenManage systems management ........................................................................................................................... 38
Dell server management operations............................................................................................................................ 43
Appendix A. Additional specifications.......................................................................................................................... 45
Chassis dimensions and weight .................................................................................................................................... 45
Power supply specifications .......................................................................................................................................... 45
Environmental specifications ........................................................................................................................................ 46
Video specifications ........................................................................................................................................................ 47
Rack rail specifications ................................................................................................................................................... 47
USB peripherals................................................................................................................................................................ 48
Appendix B. Standards compliance ............................................................................................................................. 49

Appendix C. Additional resources................................................................................................................................. 50
Appendix D. System board block diagram .................................................................................................................. 52
Table 1. New technologies ................................................................................................................................................ 6
Table 2. Comparing the PowerEdge T410 to PowerEdge T420..................................................................................7
Table 3. Technical specifications...................................................................................................................................... 8
Table 4. Chassis configurations ....................................................................................................................................... 11
Table 5. Chassis features ...................................................................................................................................................14
Table 6. Security features ..................................................................................................................................................16
Table 7. Supported processors ........................................................................................................................................18
Table 8. Memory technologies supported.....................................................................................................................19
Table 9. DIMMs supported............................................................................................................................................... 20
Table 10. Memory speed capabilities ................................................................................................................................21
Table 11. Memory RAS features .........................................................................................................................................21
Table 12. Supported hard drives ....................................................................................................................................... 23
Table 13. Supported RAID controllers.............................................................................................................................. 24
Table 14. Supported external storage .............................................................................................................................. 25
Table 15. Supported NICs and HBAs................................................................................................................................ 26
Table 16. Power tools and technologies ......................................................................................................................... 28
Table 17. Power supply efficiency ....................................................................................................................................30
Table 18. Acoustical performance.................................................................................................................................... 32
Table 19. Supported rack types......................................................................................................................................... 33
Table 20. Primary operating system support .................................................................................................................. 35
Table 21. Virtualization support ........................................................................................................................................ 36
Table 22. iDRAC7 with Lifecycle Controller functions and benefits........................................................................... 38
Table 23. Feature comparison for basic management, iDRAC7 Express, and iDRAC7 Enterprise....................... 39
Table 24. One-to-one and one-to-many operations ..................................................................................................44
Table 25. Power supply specifications............................................................................................................................. 45
Table 26. Environmental specifications ........................................................................................................................... 46
Table 27. Supported video modes for back VGA port .................................................................................................. 47
Table 28. Supported video modes for front VGA port .................................................................................................. 47
Table 29. Rail adjustability range....................................................................................................................................... 48
Table 30. Industry standard documents .......................................................................................................................... 49
Table 31. Additional resources .......................................................................................................................................... 50
Figure 1. Front view 16-drive bay without bezel ............................................................................................................ 11
Figure 2. Front view with bezel..........................................................................................................................................12
Figure 3. Back view ..............................................................................................................................................................12
Figure 4. Internal view .........................................................................................................................................................13
Figure 5. Rackable front view without bezel...................................................................................................................13
Figure 6. LCD control panel...............................................................................................................................................15
Figure 7. QRL location ........................................................................................................................................................15
Figure 8. 750W power supply unit ................................................................................................................................... 30
Figure 9. Sliding rails with optional CMA ........................................................................................................................ 33
Figure 10. Dell systems management solutions.............................................................................................................. 37
Figure 11. Systems management server lifecycle ........................................................................................................... 43
Figure 12. Tower and rack chassis dimensions ............................................................................................................... 45
Figure 13. T420 system board block diagram ................................................................................................................. 52

The 2-socket Dell™ PowerEdge™ T420 tower server delivers balanced performance and
expandability for non-disruptive growth. Optional redundancy and hot pluggability of key
components helps to protect data and keep the business running. The T420 is an excellent fit for a
wide range of applications, including workgroup collaboration, email, file and print, and small- to
mid-size database applications such as Business Analytics and Intelligence. In addition, the T420’s
performance and capacities make it highly attractive for consolidation and virtualization.
Featuring the powerful performance of two Intel®Xeon®processors E5-2400 product family, and
complemented by substantial memory capacity and broad I/O bandwidth, the T420 provides high,
balanced performance and built-in room for growth. Its twelve DIMM slots and six PCIe slots
provide memory density and wide I/O bandwidth to support both memory-intensive and data-
intensive applications and databases. Built-in capacity for up to eight 3.5-inch or sixteen 2.5-inch
hard drives accommodate data storage as your business or organization grows. These combined
technology features are highly beneficial when implementing consolidated and virtualized
environments, a role in which the T420 also shines.
To protect your virtualized workloads, the PowerEdge T420 offers dual SD media making your
hypervisors redundant and failsafe. Other reliability and availability features include hot-plug hard
drives, both hardware and software RAID options, redundant fans and hot-plug power supplies.
The PowerEdge family is engineered with the right combination of features and performance
scalability to handle tough workloads for businesses and organizations of all sizes.
The Dell OpenManage™ systems management portfolio includes Integrated Dell Remote Access
Controller 7 (iDRAC7) with Lifecycle Controller. This embedded feature helps IT administrators
manage Dell servers in physical, virtual, local and remote environments, operating in-band or
out-of-band, with or without a systems management software agent. Dell OpenManage solutions
integrate with and connect to third-party systems management solutions so you can maintain your
single point of control and capitalize on your existing investment. Dell OpenManage capabilities
simplify IT administrator tasks and reduce potential for error throughout the server lifecycle,
spanning deployment deploying, updating, monitoring, and maintaining your Dell PowerEdge
servers.

Table 1 summarizes the newest technologies used in the Dell PowerEdge T420 tower server.
New technologies
Detailed descriptions
Intel Xeon processor
E5-2400 product family
This new family of Intel processors has embedded PCIe lanes for improved I/O
performance. See the Processor section for details.
Intel C600 series chipset
The Intel Platform Controller Hub (PCH) chip is implemented on the T420 server.
1600MT/s DDR3
memory
Certain models of the Intel Xeon processor E5-2400 product family support
1600MT/s memory. The T420 supports two DIMMs per channel at 1600MT/s with
certain models. See the Memory section for details.
Next generation PERC
options
The T420 supports the new PERC controller cards with improved functionality and
faster performance. See the Storage section for details.
PERC S110 software
RAID Solution
This new software RAID solution supports RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10, and supports a
maximum of four hot-plug SATA hard drives or SATA solid-state drives. See the
Storage section for details.
iDRAC7 with Lifecycle
Controller
The new embedded system management solution for Dell servers features
hardware and firmware inventory and alerting, in-depth memory alerting, faster
performance, a dedicated gigabit port, and many more features. See the Dell
OpenManage systems management section for details.
Internal GPU support
The T420 supports internal graphics processing units (GPUs) for virtual desktop
infrastructure (VDI) and medical imaging. See the Processor section for details.
Advanced power
management
The T420 supports advanced power monitoring and power capping tools that can
help manage power consumption. See the Power, thermal, and acoustics section
for details.
Fresh Air cooling
Dell has tested and validated an integrated data center solution that enables you
to operate at higher temperatures or even chiller-less. See the Power, thermal, and
acoustics section for details.
Failsafe hypervisors
The internal dual SD module enables Dell's unique failsafe virtualization
architecture, ensuring uptime by providing failover capability for embedded
hypervisors such as VMware®vSphere®ESXi™. See the Supported virtualization
section for details.
Fan fault tolerance
Failure of one fan rotor is tolerated with degradation in performance through
active throttling and increased fan speeds. This feature helps reduce downtime by
allowing you to schedule a fan replacement within 360 hours of a fan failure.

Compared to the previous generation PowerEdge T410, the T420 supports up to 33% more
processor cores, 50% more DIMM slots, 166% more internal hard drive storage capacity, and the
greater I/O bandwidth of PCIe 3.0. Its high quality is backed by high availability features including
redundant SD cards for failsafe hypervisors and soft, fault-tolerant fans, and optional features such
as redundant high-efficiency power supplies and hot-plug hard drives.
The T420 is the new generation PowerEdge server replacing the T410. Table 2 compares some of
the T420 features to the T410 features.
Feature
PowerEdge T410
PowerEdge T420
Chassis
5U tower
5U rackable tower1
Processors
IntelXeonprocessors 5500 and
5600 series
Intel Xeon processor E5-2400 product family
Internal interconnect
Intel QuickPath Interconnect
Intel QuickPath Interconnect
Memory2
Up to 8 x DDR3 RDIMM and
UDIMM
Up to 12 x DDR3 RDIMM and UDIMM
Hard drive bays
Up to 6 x 3.5”or 2.5” hot-plug or
cabled
16 x 2.5“ hot-plug or
8 x 3.5“/2.5” hot-plug or 4 x 3.5”cabled
RAID controller
PERC 6/i, SAS 6/iR, PERC 6/E,
H200, H700, H800, S100, S300
PERC H310, H710, H710P, H810, S110
PCI slots
Up to 4 PCIe 2.0 and 1 PCIe 1.0
Up to 4 PCIe 3.0 and 2 PCIe 2.0
Embedded NICs
Dual Broadcom®1GbE LOM
Dual Broadcom 1GbE LOM
Power supplies
Non-redundant 525W
Redundant 580W
Non-redundant 550W or hot-plug, redundant
495W, 750W, or 1100W
Dell OpenManage
Systems Management
Dell OpenManage
Dell Management Console (DMC)
Lifecycle Controller 1.x
iDRAC6 (Express or Enterprise) with
Lifecycle Controller
OpenManage Essentials
Dell Management Console
IT Assistant
OMSA Agent
OpenManage Power Center (requires iDRAC7
Enterprise with Lifecycle Controller)
OpenManage Integrations and Connections
Basic management (standard option)
Internal GPU
Not supported
Up to 2 single-width or 1 double-width
Power efficiency
Gold
Platinum
Availability
Hot-plug drives
Hot-plug redundant power supply
units
Hot-plug drives
Hot-plug redundant power supply units
Fan fault tolerance
Fault-resilient memory
Internal dual SD modules
1Optional kit available for field conversion from tower to rackable unit.
2GB means 1 billion bytes and TB equals 1 trillion bytes; actual capacity varies with preloaded material and operating environment and will be less.

Table 3 summarizes the specifications for each of the PowerEdge T420 features. For the latest
information on supported features for the PowerEdge T420, visit Dell.com.
Feature
PowerEdge T420 technical specification
Form factor
5U rackable tower1
Processors
Intel Xeon processor E5-2400 product family
Processor sockets
2 sockets
Internal interconnect
1 Intel QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) link: 6.4GT/s, 7.2GT/s, 8.0GT/s
Cache
2.5MB per core with core options of 4, 6, or 8
Chipset
Intel C600
Memory2
Up to 384GB (12 DIMM slots): 2GB/4GB/8GB/16GB/32GB DDR3 up to 1600MT/s
PCIe slots
6 PCIe slots
2x16 slots with x16 bandwidth, 3.0, full-height, full-length
1x 8 slot with x4 bandwidth, 3.0, full-height, half-length
1x 8 slot with x4 bandwidth, 2.0, full-height, half-length
1x 8 slot with x4 bandwidth, 3.0, full-height, full-length
1x 8 slot with x1 bandwidth, 2.0, full-height, full-length
RAID controller
Internal controllers:
PERC S110 (SW RAID)
PERC H310
PERC H710
PERC H710P
Internal HBAs (non-RAID):
Internal tape adapter
External HBAs (RAID):
PERC H810
External HBAs (non-RAID):
6Gbps SAS HBA
Hard drives
Drive bay options:
4 x 3.5” cabled SAS or SATA drives or
8 x 3.5” or 2.5”hot-plug SAS, SATA or SSD drives or
16 x 2.5” hot-plug SAS, SATA or SSD drives
Hot-plug hard drive options:
2.5” SATA (7.2K), nearline SAS (7.2K), SAS (15K, 10K), SAS SSD, SATA SSD
3.5” SATA (7.2K), nearline SAS (7.2K), SAS (15K)
Self-encrypting drives available
Cabled hard drive options:
3.5” SATA or SAS
Embedded NIC
Broadcom 5720 1GbE Dual Port LOM
I/O adapter options
1Gb Ethernet:
Broadcom 5720 Dual Port 1Gb Base-T
Broadcom 5719 Quad Port 1Gb Base-T
Intel I350 Dual Port 1Gb Base-T
Intel I350 Quad Port 1Gb Base-T

Feature
PowerEdge T420 technical specification
10Gb Converged Ethernet:
Brocade® BR1020 Dual Port 10Gb SPF+
QLogic® QLE8262 Dual Port 10Gb DA/SFP+
Broadcom 57810S Dual Port 10Gb Base-T
Broadcom 57810S Dual Port 10Gb DA/SFP+
10Gb Ethernet:
Intel X520 Dual Port 10Gb DA/SFP+
Intel X540 Dual Port 10Gb Base-T
FC8/FC4 HBA:
QLogic QLE2460 Single Port 4Gbps
QLogic QLE2462 Dual Port 4Gbps
QLogic QLE2560 Single Port 8Gbps
QLogic QLE2562 Dual Port 8Gbps
Emulex® LPe-12000-E Single Port 8Gbps
Emulex LPe-12002-E Dual Port 8Gbps
Brocade 815 Single Port 8Gbps
Brocade 825 Dual Port 8Gbps
Power supply
Platinum efficiency 495W, 750W or 1100W power supply
Silver efficiency cabled 550W power supply
Auto-ranging power supplies
Availability
Optional high-efficiency, hot-plug, redundant power supplies; hot-plug hard drives;
TPM; dual internal SD support; redundant fans; optional bezel; information tag; ECC
memory; interactive LCD screen; extended power range; ENERGY STAR®compliant;
switch independent partitioning
Dell OpenManage
Systems Management
(Agent-free or with
OpenManage Server
Administrator [OMSA]
Agent)
OpenManage Essentials
Dell Management Console
IT Assistant
OMSA Agent
OpenManage Power Center (requires iDRAC7 Enterprise with Lifecycle
Controller)
OpenManage Integrations and Connections:
-OpenManage Integration Suite for Microsoft® System Center
-Dell Management Plug-in for VMware®vCenter™
-Connections for HP®Operations Manager, IBM®Tivoli®Netcool®and CA
Network and Systems Management
Basic management (standard option)
-Upgrade to iDRAC7 (Express or Enterprise) with Lifecycle Controller
-Upgrade to 8GB vFlash media or 16GB vFlash media for iDRAC7 Enterprise
with Lifecycle Controller
-Trial evaluations available for IDRAC7 (Express and Enterprise) with Lifecycle
Controller
Rack support
ReadyRailsTM II sliding rails for tool-less mounting in 4-post racks with square or
unthreaded round holes or tooled mounting in 4-post threaded hole racks, with
support for optional tool-less cable management arm
Operating systems
Microsoft Windows Server®2012
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, x64 (includes Hyper-V®v2)
Microsoft Windows®Small Business Server 2011
SUSE®Linux®Enterprise Server
Red Hat®Enterprise Linux®

Feature
PowerEdge T420 technical specification
Optional embedded hypervisors:
Citrix®XenServer®
VMware vSphere including ESX™and ESXi
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization®
For more information on the specific versions and additions, visit
Dell.com/OSsupport.
1Optional kit available for field conversion from tower to rackable unit.
2GB means 1 billion bytes and TB equals 1 trillion bytes; actual capacity varies with preloaded material and operating environment and
will be less.