Make in India · Burn-in tested · Hypervisor-ready
3U rack servers — capacity and GPU flexibility
For software-defined storage — Ceph, SDS and HCI — and workstation-grade GPU compute. Greater disk density and cooling volume than 2U, with serviceability kept balanced.
- High drive counts — 16–24 bays and beyond
- GPU expansion — Up to 4 double-width
- Dual CPU platforms — Xeon or EPYC
- Validated hypervisors — Five platforms
- 24–72h burn-in — Before dispatch
About the form factor
More capacity and more cooling volume than 2U
3U rack servers provide greater internal capacity than a 2U, enabling higher drive counts, better cooling and additional PCIe slots. They are the preferred choice where higher-capacity storage or a mixed compute-and-storage role is required.
Typical 3U builds combine dual-socket Intel Xeon or AMD EPYC CPUs, expansive PCIe support, and a mix of NVMe and HDD storage tiers. The chassis strikes a balance between dense storage and the expansion headroom accelerator cards need.
As with every NetBytes platform, 3U servers are burn-in tested, labelled and shipped rack-ready, validated across Proxmox VE, VMware ESXi, XCP-ng, Hyper-V and Nutanix AHV, and supported nationwide, with on-site assistance in the major cities and remote support elsewhere.
- High-capacity storage servers Designed with larger drive bays — 16 to 24 or more — to support Ceph clusters, software-defined storage and hyperconverged infrastructure. The right choice where throughput, resilience and scale-out storage are what the project is actually buying, rather than raw core count.
- GPU-enabled compute servers Workstation-grade 3U GPU systems optimised for rendering, AI and machine learning workloads, or visualisation. The greater chassis volume allows larger GPU coolers, balanced airflow and better thermals than a slimmer chassis can offer at the same accelerator count.
Example configurations
Two starting points, not a catalogue
Illustrative builds showing where each 3U line usually starts. Every system is configured to the workload.
- 3U high-capacity storage — Configuration: Dual Xeon · 512GB · 16–24 bays · Ceph-ready. Notes: Validated for SDS and HCI, redundant PSUs, 24–72h burn-in
- 3U GPU compute — Configuration: EPYC · 1TB · up to 4 GPUs · NVLink-ready. Notes: Airflow optimised for GPUs, NVMe and HDD hybrid tiers, SR-IOV capable NICs
Illustrative only. Pricing is on request and depends on the configuration actually specified.
Where 3U earns its rack space
Storage density, or accelerator thermals
The two reasons to choose 3U over 2U are different from each other. One is drive count: scale-out storage stacks want bays, and 3U provides them without moving to a 4U footprint. The other is thermal headroom for GPUs that a slimmer chassis throttles.
Mixed compute-and-storage roles sit in the same chassis for the same reason — there is room for both tiers and enough airflow to run them together under sustained load.
- Ceph, software-defined storage and hyperconverged infrastructure
- Rendering, AI/ML training and inference, and visualisation
- Hybrid layouts — NVMe cache with an HDD data tier
- Larger GPU coolers and balanced airflow under sustained load
- SR-IOV capable NICs for virtualised and clustered networking
- drive bays, or more
- double-width GPUs
- NVMe cache plus HDD
- hypervisors validated
3U servers — FAQ
What buyers ask before specifying
- Can I configure both SSDs and HDDs? — Answer: Yes. 3U designs typically allow hybrid layouts with an NVMe cache tier and HDD data tier, supporting SDS stacks such as Ceph.
- Do you provide GPU-enabled 3U servers? — Answer: Yes. Workstation-grade 3U GPU systems supporting up to 4 double-width GPUs with optimised cooling.
- Are 3U servers validated for hypervisors? — Answer: Yes. All 3U systems are validated for Proxmox VE, VMware ESXi, XCP-ng, Hyper-V and Nutanix AHV.
- What workloads suit 3U best? — Answer: Scale-out storage — Ceph, SDS, HCI — GPU compute for AI and ML, and mixed compute plus storage workloads.
At a glance
The 3U envelope
- Xeon or EPYC platforms
- for scale-out storage
- ready GPU configurations
- labelled and tested on arrival
Size it first
Work the numbers before you specify
The calculators run the same arithmetic our engineers do, so you can arrive with a starting configuration rather than a blank page.
- VM density & host sizing — Host count, memory and overcommit worked through before you specify a node.
- RAID capacity planner — Usable capacity, redundancy overhead and rebuild exposure across RAID levels.
- All sizing tools — Six calculators running the same arithmetic our engineers do.
Related range
The rest of the rack range
Where 3U is more or less than the project needs.
- 2U rack servers — The mainstream virtualisation host — balanced airflow, 8 to 16 bays, 2 to 6 PCIe slots.
- 4U rack servers — Maximum density — 24 to 36 bays and up to 8 double-width GPUs.
- Rack GPU AI servers — Purpose-built GPU nodes at 2 to 6 accelerators, with the fabric to feed them.