Following up on the highly praised Dell PowerEdge 12th Generation Server launch announced on February 27th 2012, today Dell announced the second wave of the new line of PowerEdge Servers which include performance and density minded 4 socket systems (Dell PowerEdge R820 and M820), as well as a line of value oriented 2 and 1 socket server systems.

These new servers carry over the same great feature set as the initial 12th Generation PowerEdge launch systems such as Dell Express Flash PCIe SSD drives, improved acoustics, advanced RAS redundancy features, Enterprise Class Systems Management with iDRAC7 and OpenManage Essentials, Fresh-Air cooling technology, internal support for GPUs, improved power efficiency, the Quick Resource Locator guide, and Redundant SD Cards for your hypervisors.   This new launch provides additional options to suit customer needs no matter what size business you are supporting.

The servers that we announced today include:

Rack Servers - Dell 12th Generation PowerEdge Servers

• R820 - 4S/2U Leading Server for Dense Virtualization & Scale-out Databases
• R520 - 2S/2U with astute balance of scalability and performance for low-cost storage, web serving or hosting
• R420 - 2S/2U with double-down density for Web hosting, Collaboration & HPC
• R320 - 1S/1U performance-packed server for uncompromised enterprise file-sharing and web app availability

Blades - Dell 12th Generation PowerEdge Servers

• M820 - 4S / full height - The ultimate 4-socket performance and density server (8 per M1000e chassis)
• M520 - 2S / half height - Industry-leading half-height blade power efficiency delivering enhanced performance in the M1000e (16 per chassis)
• M420 - 2S / quarter height Unprecedented computational density with full enterprise features that dramatically lowers infrastructure costs (32 per chassis)

Tower - Dell 12th Generation PowerEdge Servers

• T420 - 2S/5U Quiet, rackable tower with balanced performance and scalability for shared applications, virtualization, email
• T320 - 1S/5U Quiet performance-packed, rackable tower with most slots, bays & availability in class for entry email and virtualization

Personally I'm most excited about the M420 for it's innovative form factor and extreme density. You can fit 32 these 2 socket servers in one M1000e for a total of 64 sockets in a single chassis!  Even at that density you still get the systems management benefits of the iDRAC7 with Lifecycle controller and mirrored SD flash for redundant hypervisors.  You can also fit two 1.8" SSD drives in each M420 blade as well.

For more information about the M420 and all of the 12th Generation PowerEdge Server Wave 2 products we announced today, check out our other Dell blogs:

• Extending the Benefits of 12th Generation PowerEdge Servers on Direct2Dell
• Dell Delivers Density on Inside Enterprise IT
• Dell TechCenter 12th Generation Server Resource page
• Dell PowerEdge M420 Blade Product Information Page