"what might Dell have been referring to" The largest validated hard drive available at the time of that writing.  Note the date on that document:  June 2006.  Enterprise-class drives larger than 250GB were very uncommon, if available at all.  The PowerEdge 2900 has three revisions:  I, II, III.  Each one added slightly better technology:  PERC 6, TPM, faster FSB, support for better processors, more RAM, etc.  Take a look at the document for the 2900 III, dated November 2007, where the largest validated drive is 1TB.   www.dell.com/.../pe_2900_III_spec_sheet.pdf Dell does not sell 2TB drives specifically for the 2900, as it went end-of-life before 2TB drives were widely available in the enterprise world, but the controllers do support them (they must be enterprise-class drives and should be certified for use on the PERC (Dell-branded)). If you have specific questions based on the revision you have, let me know which one you have.
What’s the maximum amount of internal storage a PowerEdge 2900 server with a J7551 (Dell part number) motherboard will support? Does the fact that the machine has a PERC 5/i integrated controller card allow me to have the maximum amount of storage on each individual array, or is said maximum a per machine number? Many thanks!  J.B.
Maximum internal storage in a first generation PowerEdge 2900