Making the Diagnostic Tool Bootdisk for Dell Servers.

Making the Diagnostic Tool Bootdisk for Dell Servers.

I started wondering how I was going to test a dell 2950 (9th generation, 9g) if it didn't have a diagnostic tool built into the boot screen like my dell r510(11th generation, 11g) does.  I started hunting around on google and found an interesting link from their knowledge base

How to Run Hardware Diagnostics on your PowerEdge Server

I expanded all the possible choices, 12g and 13g just to see what improvements have been made
11g To see a reference to my own r510,
and then 9g and 10g to try and figure out my approach to my current ~70lb paperweight 2950s.

Looks pretty simple. (It wasn't.) Lets get started.

Western Digital Enterprise level Hard Drives (hdd)

I recently posted a QA post about Western Digital Hard drives.  However after searching on Ebay for some hard drives that were more moderately priced I realized none of the model numbers matched what I was seeing on ebay.  Took me a bit of research to find some information but I found Western Digital has recently updated their website and all of the google links, (and half of Western Digital's links) associated to Western Digital's .pdfs do not work.  Slowly deleting chunks out of the URL eventually put me at their main page.  Western Digital's Search function worked very well that I eventually found what I was looking for.  WD RE4 direct support page . Each page has alot of resources and forum posts addressing user problems so it's worth a read if you have any Western Digital Hard drive.  I included some more information below incase you're looking at other older WD drives or want a few model numbers.

How to check your system components for errors in a dell r510

How to check you system components for errors in a dell r510

Whether you're buying hardware direct from the manufacturer, from an auction on ebay, or from government surplus website you want to confirm that your purchase is working as intended before you put in some serious work..  Many ebay auctions come with a 14-30 day DOA warranty so you'll need to run as many tests quickly to be able to start the return process if something is wrong.

This blog tries to make zero assumptions as to previous knowledge.  I know when I've done something completely out of my comfort zone I start to wonder, 'Is this really supposed to be taking this long'.  This post is going to read half instructional and half like a twitter feed just so you can see what's possible with my Dell r510 hardware and see how much time this process takes. With that preface lets get this show on the road.

The Dell iDRAC6 - Part 1 - iDRAC6 Configuration Utility

The Dell iDRAC or the integrated Dell Remote Access Controller is the core of the remote management of a Dell Server.  This is one of the main differences and advantages of buying a server over a very well equipped Consumer Motherboard and making it into a server. A remote management tool allows us to do many functionalities that have often been limited to us unless we're right next to the PC, The iDRAC gives us access to everything you see scroll on the computer screen before it loads the Operating System (OS).  Each generation of Dell Servers has come with advancements in the iDRAC system. My r510 has the iDRAC6 which were used with the 11g or 11th generation server, My T130 has an iDRAC8 because it's an 13g server from dell.

However to use the iDRAC you must first configure how to find it through your network.  This is where the iDRAC6 Configuration Utility comes into play that you see on your boot screens when your server first starts up.  It's one of the quickest checks your system does during booting and the last one it does on my system before booting into your OS.  Be prepared to hit Ctrl + E as soon as your virtual drives are found.  Lets see what those choices are.

Hard Drive size requirements for a vm after updating with Windows 10 Anniversary patch.

Hard Drive size requirements for a vm after updating with Windows 10 Anniversary patch.

This post came about when I saw the anniversary patch hadn't been applied to my windows 10 install after running windows update and it was needed to get Microsoft Edge with extensions. I hadn't planned on this being a blog post, just a recording of space requirements for patching, but it was not a quick fix so I wrote about it while it was going on.

The question is: How much hard disk space will a vm of windows 10 pro take up after being fully updated?

Q and A Tangents 2 - Dell hard drives and storage

Q and A Tangents 2 - Dell hard drives and storage

Q: What hard drive can I put into a dell r510
A: Apparently 2gb is the maximum you can put into a dell server, not sure if that's with Perc 6i only or also with the H700.  Even then, there are certain harddrives that are preferred and others that won't even be recognized correctly.

Need to find a list of supported drives for r510 etc and why others might work, but not be recommended. Need to find a list of sata3 and sata6 capabilities too. TODO

My favorite reddit  r/homelab/ actually answered this, I copied their answer down below so I can find it faster in the future.  Blogger quotes screws up everything so the rest of this Answer is directly from r/homelab.  But for me and my Perc6/i it basically forces me to find some 2tb WD RE4's YYS which are slowly going out of production. Below doesn't mention what is available with the Perc 6'i though. TODO

Dell Perc6/i

Lots of Dell servers still have Perc6/i Raid cards in them.

These cards will not be able to use a drive over 2Tb and Dell have no plans of ever updating the firmware to support the larger drives we want to use.

If your server comes with a Perc6/i and you want to use larger drives then you will need to upgrade it to a newer card, the 2 most popular options if you want to stay with Dell are the H200 or the H700.

Now which out of the 2 you want will depend on your needs, -if you are going to be running FreenNAS or any such solution for your storage you will want to go with the H200 as this card supports JBOD mode which is what you will want to pass SMART data through to the OS, The H700 does not support this mode so will not be suitable for these types of storage solution. If you are interested in Hardware Raid from the card then both cards support this, the H700 is the better of the 2 cards as it supports both a BBWC and Raid Levels 0,1,5,6,10,50,60 Whereas the H200 does not support BBWC and will only do Raid levels 0,1,10.

If you are not using drives over 2Tb is possible to use the Perc6/i but be aware the card is only a 3Gb/s card where as the other 2 are both 6 Gb/s.

Q: What are the advantages and disadvantages of using (WD) Western Digital RE drives
A: Power Consumption and sound seem to be large problems for WD RE drives and interestingly enough the link below talks about Red Pro drives and how similar they are in power requirements and sound to the RE drives vs the normal REDs.  I've got dual 870w gold power supplies so power shouldn't be an issue, but I'm not looking to go broke paying to run a server either.  I can supply it, but do I want to.

The main problem for me is going to be sound volume.  I need some quiet drives

Found the jackpot...by looking where I'm supposed to look.