PowerEdge R710 Bootable PCIe SSD

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DarthBlue

Commendable
Jun 11, 2016
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I recently acquired a R710 poweredge server with a H700 raid controller to use as my home media/security server.
My goal is to use a PCIe SSD for the OS and leave the entire 6 bays for data storage. I have read a number of posts that hint that this is possible, but in practice, I am hitting a dead end.

I am using a SEDNA SE-PCIE-SSD-SATA6G-2P-FBA adaptor with a ADATA SP550 SSD. the OS I'm using is Windows 10 (has enough server functions for my needs).

The issue I have is that the ONLY way the SSD will boot is if the H700 raid array is in some way disabled.

I first narrowed that down by powering down and pulling the raid card. Then it would boot to the SSD... Then I put the card back and deleted the array in the RAID BIOS, still boots fine. As soon as I put together a RAID, it fails to boot to the SSD.

I have tested a number of different BIOS configurations with no joy so now I send out my plea for help to the server gods...

Am I missing something? Do I need to change the hardware? Can this be fixed within windows?

Thanks for the help. :)

Paul
 
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DarthBlue

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Jun 11, 2016
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It really is not that loud except during boot-up. ( perhaps you are thinking of a 2950?)
It will keep things nice and warm in the winter though.. ;)

I tried all slots, no change.
 
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DarthBlue

Commendable
Jun 11, 2016
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Just to close this thread and to help anyone that happens to try this, I was never able to get this to work...

I instead did a kinda redneck solution that didn't give me the speed of the PCI slot, but it did keep my 6 HD bays open for RAID drives. What I did was to unplugged the DVD drive from the motherboards SATA 1 slot and moved it to slot 2. I then plugged my SSD into slot 1 and used an external drive power supply that I got from a USB hard drive adaptor. (Sabrent USB-DSC5)

It's an ugly fix, but it does work. lol

Now that I have that hammered out, I have run into my next problem and that is that Windows 10 won't recognize my RAID drive unless the OS is installed on it. (and then it only sees 2 TB)
But that is for a different post.

Thanks to those that tried to help. I appreciate it!
 
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Oj99

Reputable
Aug 4, 2016
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4,510
Sorry to wake the dead.
I'm haveing same problem but with a dell R610, in the Idrac you can maybe choose a first boot device?
im going to try it when home.
 
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apesoccer

apesoccer

Distinguished
Jun 11, 2004
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also rezz'ing the dead for no good reason...

I've fiddled a bit with these and just thought i'd throw my 2 bits about things you probably don't care a bit about.

the r710's do get a bit warm (even in winter heh). And can i just say, buy the 2.4ghz w/ht (e5620) over the 2.13ghz (e5606)...I'd rather have 1 2.4 then 2 2.13 xeons...You can get lots of other cpu's but those 2 seem to be about the most available. And 2x 2.4 w/ht en, is twice as capable as the 2.13 in vmware...You start getting all sorts of %cstp when you hand out too many vcpu's...Which is of course true on any system...but if you vmotion those same vm's over to a pair of 2.4's with the exact same setup, the cstp goes away completely, as in 0 cstp.

But yea, you aren't using vm's, you're running win 10. =)

Another side note...If running win 10, you can definitely run a relatively high end gpu on there (there were limits...i couldn't get a 7950 to run in there for instance...something about the special* limit on the pci-e lanes in that particular server max 40w or something[that is literally a guess i can't remember what the actual max was]...gpu's require a minimum to run...some higher some lower...). I ran an old amd 6850 in there for a good while, and ran a few benches as well that i think i have somewhere. You just have to cut down the 16x to a 8x pcie on the card...or buy a 16x to 8x cable and run it outside of the case...Then you have to come up with a way to get power to it, and thats the more interesting bit. I did it the lazy way and literally laid another powersupply on top of the outside of my r710, then ran the extra power in to the r710 to the 6850. (Note that requires a way to turn on the extra powersupply as well...i used another computer...but there are cleaner ways for sure...jumping the boot area of the secondary psu etc...).
 
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