Dell Technologies unveiled on Feb. 26 the Dell PowerEdge XR9700, a fully sealed rugged server using a closed-loop liquid-cooled system for cloud RAN and edge AI workloads.

The company said the Dell PowerEdge XR9700 is designed to operate in outdoor environments directly exposed on utility poles, rooftops and building exteriors without external protective equipment. It said the system is intended to help deliver high-performance computing in dense urban areas, remote locations and space-constrained facilities where existing data centre infrastructure is difficult to reach.

Telecom operators and organisations running edge environments face difficulties deploying computing resources due to power and space constraints. The Dell PowerEdge XR9700 addresses these issues, delivering high-performance computing in a fully isolated, ultra-compact IP66-rated enclosure that can be installed directly where needed.

Telecom operators can use the XR9700 server based on a flexible software-defined architecture to handle cloud RAN and Open RAN at each base station site. They can also run edge and AI applications directly where data is generated and consumed.

An Intel Xeon 6 with integrated Intel vRAN Boost and Intel AMX technologies. Kyung-jin Kim (김경진), head of Korea at Dell Technologies, said, "Computing performance should not be constrained even in extreme outdoor environments." He said, "The Dell PowerEdge XR9700 opens up new possibilities for network expansion and edge applications by extending cloud RAN, Open RAN and edge AI capabilities to locations where deployment was previously impossible."

The Dell PowerEdge XR9700 is scheduled to be launched in the second half of 2026.