So I managed to pick up a Dell VRTX with 15 900GB SAS drives (10x10k+5x15k) and two M620 blades.
I can’t find a definitive answer about if I can put in the M640 blades, does anyone have any experience with these chassis and putting in much newer blades?
Yes you can run M640’s or a mix of M640’s and older blades in the VRTX assuming you’re running CMC firmware 3.0 or later. You’ll most likely want to get M640’s with the pcie pass through mezzanines in them so that they will have access to the pcie slots in the vrtx chassis. The M640’s will boot and run without these mezzanines installed however.
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Awesome, yeah I have CMC 3.4 installed.
I am not too concerned about the pci-e passthrough as my use case does not required it, just 10gbit networking and access to the internal storage array.
My usage case is headless game servers (DCS World, Minecraft, Valheim, Ark Survival Evolved, whatever else takes my fancy at the time.
Do you have the 10GBE IO module in the VRTX chassis itself? the M620/M630/M640 blades usually have the 10 GBE daughter cards (not mezzanines) in them to support 10GBE, but the VRTX chassis itself needs a somewhat uncommon R-2210 IO module in it to pipe the 10 GBE out of the chassis.
Yep 10gig modules in th blades, 10gig switch module, and 10gig external connections (not sure if the switch and external connections are separate items).
will go through the chassis when I get home today and take some pics and screenshots 
I got a really good deal on the whole thing (AU$300 for the whole thing, two m620 blades, 10x 900gb 10k sas, 5x 15k rpm etc.)
Nice VRTX, can soon get one from work also with m620 blades in it. However, the company we bought had one in their “server room” and they blew outside air in so it’s all gross inside the blades, but I can have it cheap, and it had 8 months of support on it left orso.
Definately a cool bit of gear, a little limiting in some ways, but very flexible in others.
I just wish I could afford to fill it with M640 blades lol.
Definately worth picking up IMO, and a bit of TLC and elbow grease and she will clean up nicely.
Hey, so picked up the VRTX from work! Cleaned in inside and out as good as I could. I was wondering if it’s normal that it consumes ~200 watts when the chassis is powered on but no blades on? With 1 CMC installed, the 2210 10gbe switch and 8 SAS drives.
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Not sure on the exact figures, but remember that the chassis when on with no blades running is essentially a SAN and a 10gb switch, so 200w is not completely out of ordinary I would think.
~200w idle (chassis powered up, no blades) is normal for a VRTX, that figure can be lowered a decent amount if you don’t have all 4 power supplies running.
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