Dell R610 with 6.7

[ReazBaksh]

Hello

I have two Dell R610 servers that works well with 6.5.  I'm looking to upgrade to 6.7 on one but the CPU is not supported.  Is it possible to replace the motherboard in a R610 with one that supports the 6.7 CPU's?  I ask this since I think it may be cheaper to go this route that purchase another server.  I know this may be a Dell forum question but since this is a popular server someone may have an idea.

Thanks

[daphnissov]

I also have R610s in my home lab, but to my knowledge none of those boards supported CPUs now compatible with 6.7. So the question becomes swapping your board for a different board that occurred in different models, and that I think is a "no". Even if it were a "yes", don't think you could just perform that swap with an existing ESXi install and upgrade to 6.7 because that wouldn't work.

[ReazBaksh]

After doing some investigating I think that if I got a R630 or R640 motherboard it may work.  I need to see if I can use the same power supplies.

[daphnissov]

I think you're better off just replacing your server at that point.

[ReazBaksh]

You may be right.  It may be even more expansive that just purchasing a used R630 or R640.

[homosassa]

Hi,

I updated 4 DELL R610 with 2 x X5670 CPUs and the update to last vSphere version 6.7 goes without problems.

Regards

Andreas

[ReazBaksh]

According to the manual the R610, the one that I have, it seems to only support the X5500 series.  I don't see support for the X5600's.  What is the motherboard model number you have?  Could there be more than one version of the R610?

[IRIX201110141]

R610 supports Nehalem (55xx) and Westmere(56xx) because in every Poweredge Generation there was a least one Intel CPU refresh. Question is if an early 610 supports both (lates bios installed) or was it a MLK and may also needs newer system board.

But.. on paper both CPU are not supportet and outdated from a VMware ESXi perspetive.

Note... i have something in mind as my colleagues play around with our R710. They say that an inplace upgrade to 6.7 was successfuly but a new clean installation went  fail because of the CPU warning where the installer comes to a hold.  So question is was this also on a westmere system or was the inplace upgrade the trick.

Btw. in such situation we only upgrade vCenter to 6.7 and stay on 6.5 for the hosts because i cant see that much difference on ESXi 6.5 <-> 6.7 on 10 year old hosts.

Regards,
Joerg

[ReazBaksh]

Thanks for the information. How would I be able to find out what type of R610 I have. Would it be the motherboard model or the serial of the server?