31 votes

Disable hyperthreading from within Linux (no access to BIOS)

Newer Kernels provide a Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) control. You can check the state of SMT with; cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/smt/active Change the state with echo off | sudo tee /sys/devices/...
Nick Bascombe-Fox's user avatar
17 votes

How do I stop Dell R730xd fans from going full speed when Broadcom/QLogic NetXtreme 57711 PCI card added?

After tearing my hair out on newly arrived lovely R730xd with 16 3.5" disk slots spinning fans at 15k RPM when Intel X520-DA2 10G card is in any PCI slot, I've found following solution for CentOS ...
kuz8's user avatar
  • 473
14 votes

Disable hyperthreading from within Linux (no access to BIOS)

A script to disable hyperthreading in the machine startup... To disable hyperthreading I include a script on machine /etc/rc.local. It is not exaclty clean, but is easy to install, independent of cpu ...
Lucas's user avatar
  • 523
13 votes

Purpose of vent holes on the top of rackmount servers?

(Some people are hard to please...) These are likely system exhaust vents and fit into the total design of the product. Please understand that the system is designed and optimized for rack mounting ...
ewwhite's user avatar
  • 197k
13 votes
Accepted

How to directly add an SSD to a PowerEdge server without entering BIOS or creating a Virtual Disk?

Required Note: I work for Dell In order to get the system to "see" this first SSD, I first had to use the BIOS to create a Virtual Disk representing that Physical Disk. This was frustrating ...
Grant Curell's user avatar
  • 1,068
11 votes

How to install ZFS on Dell Poweredge server and Dell disk array without using the RAID controller

It depends: H200/300 and PERC9 (ie: 330, 730, 830) cards have the capability to work in pass-through mode, meaning that the disks can be directly presented to the operating system. To do that, you ...
shodanshok's user avatar
11 votes
Accepted

Can we upgrade Dell's basic Server R240 (which still uses HDD 7200RPM) to an SSD?

On Dell's R210, R220 and T130 I've successfully used Sandisk's consumer grade SSDs for years. I've done this with PERC's H410 and H710 controllers. It will be a matter of controller and controller's ...
Marco's user avatar
  • 1,709
10 votes

Disable hyperthreading from within Linux (no access to BIOS)

You can use the "thread_siblings_list" for each core to turn off the second core in the HT pair. The following command pipeline is hacky, not optimised, and done this way hopefully to make it easier ...
Paul M's user avatar
  • 583
9 votes
Accepted

Dell PowerEdge T310 won't POST after memory upgrade

Take a look at the technical data sheet for your memory. Specifically, the HMT31GR7BFR4A you have is dual-rank, not quad-rank. Your system probably does not support dual-ranked 8 GB for 32 GB total (...
Bob's user avatar
  • 1,556
9 votes

Can we upgrade Dell's basic Server R240 (which still uses HDD 7200RPM) to an SSD?

Yes, you can swap HDDs <-> SSDs the way you want. Moreover, it's OK to use non-Dell branded SSDs inside Dell servers, you won't receive support (of course!) and some functions won't work like LEDs, ...
BaronSamedi1958's user avatar
9 votes

Differences between HW RAID and ZFS

Hardware RAID vs ZFS doesn't make a lot of difference from a raw throughput perspective -- either system needs to distribute data across multiple disks, and that requires running a few bit shifting ...
Simon Richter's user avatar
8 votes
Accepted

Max drive size for PERC H700 in Dell r610

Just to share my config, i got a PERC H700 (inside a R410 server) with the firmware version 12.3.0-0032 and my 4 new hard drives IronWolf 10 TB are seen as 2 TB drives. After upgrading the firmware to ...
Marco's user avatar
  • 1,709
7 votes

Dell PowerEdge R200 won't boot, has flashing green and blue lights

Well, right up front, let me tell that the outlook is not good. 10:1 (at least) that your motherboard is bad and needs to be replaced. The standard troubleshooting approach to this problem is to ...
HopelessN00b's user avatar
  • 53.8k
7 votes
Accepted

control a server before the OS loads

Your server should have DRAC available and there are most likely upgrade licenses available to allow full remote management capabilities (including remote video that works completely without OS). DRAC ...
Sven's user avatar
  • 98.8k
7 votes
Accepted

E3-1240 v5 cpufreq-info says: "no or unknown cpufreq driver is active on this CPU"

Modern Intel processors use P-states for CPU frequency control. When Linux is using this driver, it will be visible thus: # cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_driver intel_pstate The ...
Michael Hampton's user avatar
7 votes
Accepted

Can I configure AC Power Restored option via iDRAC on a Dell PowerEdge server?

Although Twisty's solution is probably the easiest, it requires OMSA to be installed. You actually can change this setting using the iDrac8, but from command line only. To do so, SSH into the idrac (...
sfk's user avatar
  • 644
7 votes
Accepted

Upgrading existing environment to vSphere 6.5

1) Backup everything with Veeam 2) Decomission one host from your ESXi 5.0 cluster 3) Create one-node ESXi 6.5 cluster from decommissioned in (2) host 4) Restore VMs from your backup to your new ...
BaronSamedi1958's user avatar
7 votes
Accepted

How to upgrade iDRAC firmware and BIOS of Dell PowerEdge R510?

As shown in the training video in section 4 of the support article Dell PowerEdge: How to a Remote Firmware Update with the iDRAC?, you must manually unzip iDRAC6_1.85_A00_FW_IMG.exe and upload the ...
Harry Johnston's user avatar
7 votes

Dell PowerEdge T310 won't POST after memory upgrade

Diagnostic lights 1 and 4 means system board failure. Either you have the incorrect RAM, A bad ram stick or a bad system board. I looked at the firmware updates and none address an issue with ram.
Joe's user avatar
  • 1,170
7 votes

Dell R730xd - Best way to configure storage for simultaneous use with ZFS & Hardware RAID

Regarding your question about splitting the backplane across controllers, yes, it's possible. I've done this with 8-bay enclosures where two 4-lane SAS SFF-8087 connectors were present. 4 disks to one ...
ewwhite's user avatar
  • 197k
6 votes

Disable hyperthreading from within Linux (no access to BIOS)

Disable SMT / HT at boot time using the kernel command line parameter nosmt: nosmt [KNL,S390] Disable symmetric multithreading (SMT). Equivalent to smt=1. ...
Erik's user avatar
  • 161
6 votes
Accepted

Quieting down a Dell PowerEdge r710

This is an enterprise-class server. It's doing what it was designed to do... You're using it in a manner in which it was not intended... I wouldn't recommend altering the hot-swap fans or power supply ...
ewwhite's user avatar
  • 197k
6 votes
Accepted

ZFS on enterprise RAID pass-through, and ZFS on FreeBSD root

You can control the PERC H730 and H330 using the LSI MegaCLI utility as both of these cards are Dell PERC badged LSI cards. There is an excellent article and tutorial on how to do this at https://...
cas's user avatar
  • 6,783
6 votes
Accepted

How to connect two Dell storage arrays to a to a Dell Poweredge server (daisy chain vs direct)?

You can stack the MD unit that way; (In the image its 3 MD, but you can see how) For your openmanage question, yes, it can be used remotly, but be sure to set the routing correctly in the management ...
yagmoth555's user avatar
  • 16.8k
6 votes

How safe is Raid 0 with Perc710P hardware raid controller?

Regardless of how RAID 0 is implemented it works the same way, it does not include fault tolerance. If a disk fails you will loose access to the RAID 0 volume. If you want fault tolerance for your ...
Michael Brown's user avatar
6 votes

High pitched noise on PowerEdge 1950

It's probably screaming to be put out of its misery. Seriously, thats a 12+ year old server you got there. They are easy to take apart and investigate. I'd get out a thing of canned air, take out the ...
dmourati's user avatar
  • 25.6k
6 votes

Recover data from failed RAID 5 Dell Poweredge T710 Server

Wow. This question. Another example of what not to do. You don't have appropriate backup methods in place. You don't know if your backups are any good and have no good way to test them. You have data ...
joeqwerty's user avatar
  • 110k
6 votes

Dell PowerEdge R7525 + Nvidia A16

(I work for Dell) - specifically, I do a lot of optimization. I think you're tracking a bit off course; "Above 4G decoding" is a feature left over from when BIOS PCIe memory enumeration was ...
Grant Curell's user avatar
  • 1,068
5 votes
Accepted

Windows Server Backup Fails: There is not enough disk space to create the volume shadow copy...

Change your VSS for the system partition to use the C:\ at present it doesn't have enough space to create VSS for itself so fails the backup.
Rob's user avatar
  • 66
5 votes

Any trick to connect to the DRAC console from a mac?

For DRAC5 you don't need to use any virtual machine with Windows or Linux. Just do some simple java configuration (for Java8u31 and later). If you have not already installed Java install it link or ...
Alex's user avatar
  • 231

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