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Jul

2

PE2800 Fail

Filed Under Computers, Home Server, Projects, Virtual Server

Since installing Windows Server 2008 and running Windows Home Server in a virtual machine, I have been having stability issues. As I do not appreciate this, I have been meaning to move my Windows Home Server back to a stand-alone install, but that would leave me without a Windows Server 2008 test bed.

Power Edge 2800I originally decided to go with this configuration so that I could finally retire my previous virtual server, a PowerEdge 2800, which is a very noisy, power-hungry monster. However, due to the stability issues I am having, I feel I should default back to the PE2800 as my main virtual server in the home, and put dedicated resources back to the WHS. This means reinstalling Server 2008 and Hyper-V on the PE2800. Luckily, I did my research in advance and found my Intel Xeon 7030 chip and verified that it supports Intel VT.

However, a few minutes prior to reinstalling, I had a drive in my RAID5 configuration fail. So I spent several hours this evening rebuilding this array. During this time, I had popped open the Dell Open Manage software, and I saw that “Virtual Technology” was listed as “NO.”

I thought to myself, “this is no good,”  but obviously since my processor supports IntelVT, everything will be fine, right? Wrong. Apparently Dell didn’t think about Virtualization back when they were making the 18xx/28xx series, even after the most current BIOS update. So basically Server 2008 with Hyper-V is out of the question.

So where does this leave me? Honestly? I have no idea. I have a few options, none of which I like:

  1. Leave the unstable Server 2008 box in production, and turn off the PE2800.
  2. Remove 2008 on the WHS, and use the PE2800 w/ VS2k5 to run VM’s
  3. Build a new low-budget Virtual Server machine

Obviously option #1 is cheapest, but also the biggest pain to live with. #3 is my ideal scenario, but this is a major set back for some other budgetary goals I have currently. Which, sadly, leaves me with option #2, which sucks. I will be losing my Hyper-V test-bed for the sake of stability. While I do not do a lot with it, Hyper-V has been fun to play with and I would like to continue, but it doesn’t look like that is going to happen.

Comments

7 Responses to “PE2800 Fail”

  1. seth on July 3rd, 2009 12:18 pm

    3

  2. andy on July 3rd, 2009 4:28 pm

    4 – buy a non dell

  3. Mike on July 3rd, 2009 5:50 pm

    @andy – option #3 would be a non-dell. :)

  4. andy on July 3rd, 2009 11:05 pm

    good… non-dell is a good thing

  5. mike on July 3rd, 2009 11:47 pm

    I can’t say I agree. I actually like most Dell servers, and I don’t think it would really be fair to knock my old 2004 system for features I want in 2009. So for it’s time, it was a solid machine.

  6. seth on July 4th, 2009 6:30 pm

    I’ve yet to have a bad experience with Dell servers. HP had issues but support replaced things relatively quickly. IBM has been a complete and total crap end user experience that I wouldn’t even wish upon my competition.

  7. Update: Home Server Success : dsu | Mike on July 24th, 2009 6:08 pm

    [...] I found that the PE2800 failed at motherboards with IntelVT, even though the CPU supported it (just my luck). As such, I researching some more, [...]

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