So I have this great Dell PowerEdge T605 server that I want to deploy as a Hyper-V server at home (more on why in a later posting), but suffice to say, I had a hard time accomplishing this seemingly trivial task.
First, there was a problem with my hardware (from transit) – the machine has two Opteron 2376 CPUs, but one of the heatsink mounts broke, and the hold-down clip failed. Luckily I decided to install larger HDs (4x 1 TB WD Caviar Black HDs) and a third-party SATA RAID controller (Highpoint PCI-E x4 RocketRAID) and I noticed the one heatsink towers was crooked. I opened a Dell Warranty claim on Friday afternoon (EST) and they quoted next business-day repair (they’d send a tech, since they are replacing the MB which the heatsink clip is installed on), and Monday by 1:00 PM the tech was on site, with all the required parts. Within 30 minutes the MB was replaced, and the system powered-up and tested fine.
Then, with the hardware in a known-good state, I decided to do a test install of Windows Server 2008 R2 (which is x64), but couldn’t use the included “system build” DVD that shipped with the system (it was cut before R2 was released), so I downloaded the current “system build” DVD, but it stalled, asking for a “Windows Server Install Pack” (or something similar), so I decided to try a straight install, ignoring Dell’s utility all together. Well, that didn’t go well either – the server has an unusual/unknown SATA controller, so even though the system was able to access the DVD to load the initial portion of the install DVD, it failed when it tried to ascertain what images are on the DVD (Standard, Enterprise, etc) – it asked for a driver for the DVD drive.
I went to the Dell site and downloaded the latest chipset driver for Windows Server 2008 R2, unzipped it onto a flash drive, then pointed the installer at the proper folder and the install went fine from there. The SATA controller is AMD HT1000.
I’ll figure out the Dell system build/install DVD issue when I go to make the final install, but till then, this will do fine.
Tags: Install, Windows Server 2008 R2