Dell T310 - Home Lab

[masti]

Hi All,

I want to purchase 2 of  Dell Poweredge T310 server for my home lab to practice and prepare for my VCP certification.Following is the spec i have choosen and please let me know if this is compatible and i am good to go to setup my lab, do i need to make any changes to these specs ? I have not ordered any RAID controllers and do i really need one ???

PowerEdge T310 Chassis with upto 4 Cabled Hard Drives and Quad Pack LED Diagnostics        
     Shipping for PowerEdge T310        
     16GB Memory , 1333MHz  UDIMM        
     X3430 Xeon Processor, 2.4 GHz 8M Cache, Turbo        
     PowerEdge T310 Heatsink        
     No Controller        
     No Operating System        
    On-Board Dual Gigabit Network Adapter        
    Baseboard Management Controller        
    SATA Optical Drive Cable for PowerEdge T310        
    Onboard SATA, 1-4 Hard Drives connected to onboard SATA Controller -No RAID  

   250GB 7.2k RPM Serial ATA     3Gbps 3.5-in Cabled Hard Drive

   250GB 7.2k RPM Serial ATA     3Gbps 3.5-in Cabled Hard Drive     
   Power Supply, Non-Redundant 375W

Thanks in advance,

[MauroBonder]

Hi

First check in HCL if are compatible with your desired version of VMware to install.

http://www.vmware.com/go/hcl

Please, don't forget the awarding points for "helpful" and/or "correct" answers. 

Mauro Bonder - Moderator

[masti]

I don't see T310 listed and compatible for any of these version 4.1/4.0 installable ,i want to know if anyone has any experience and had it working with these servers.

[MauroBonder · Accepted solution]

I found follow discussion check if help http://communities.vmware.com/message/1475041

i do search in HCL - check result -

Search Results: Your search for "Systems" returned 2 results.

Display:

Partner Name	Model	CPU Series	Supported Releases
DELL	PowerEdge T310	Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series	ESX 4.1 U1 4.1 4.1 U1 4.1 ...
DELL	PowerEdge T310	Intel Xeon 34xx Lynnfield Series	ESX 4.1 U1 4.1 4.1 U1 4.1 ...

Please, don't forget the awarding points for "helpful" and/or "correct" answers.

Mauro Bonder - Moderator

[masti]

I just called Dell Sale Expert who helped me placing the order and he told me that T310 comes with embedded Hypervisor and will support all version of ESX from 3.5 till date and its same for ESXi, and it works good without RAID controller also. Only Servers which dont work with Raid controllers are T110 servers. It seems dell also supports and sells pre-build systems with vmware vsphere with 1 yr and 3yr subscritption with T310 Model servers.

Thanks for your help.

[MauroBonder]

Yes, some manufacturers sell servers with in-built OEM version. Glad you managed to solve your problem.
Good studies.

YOu´re Welcome

[matt232]

Poweredge T110 and T310 both work fine with ESXi 4.1 and they are both listed in the HCL.

However the one gotcha is if you try and use a non-Dell Raid card (in my case a Adaptec 2405 which is also in the HCL) in a T110 it will not boot due to a limitation in the T110's BIOS there are a few post about this around the place. If you aren't happy with just using a non raid setup in a T110 the a SAS 6i/R is at least one way to go and works fine for me.

So far I've not checked the Adaptec 2405 card in the T310 though to see if it has a similar BIOS limitation.....I don't anticipate an issue here though....but then again I didn't anticipate the issue in the T110 either.

[Prime201110141]

To enable your system to boot from Adaptec RAID 2405:

Enter the system setup by pressing F2 on Dell T110/T310

Navigate to the drive boot sequence.

Move the boot controller( Adaptec RAID 2405 ) to the top of the list (For more information, refer to T110/T310 documentation).

Press Esc and select "Save & Exit", then system will restart.

When the system boot pass the Dell Logo screen you will be prompted, press Ctrl+A to enter the ARC utility ( Adaptec RAID Configuration Utility ).

press Ctrl+A and get inside the Adaptec RAID Configuration Utility.

And follow your screen to Configure your respective Raid Level.

Hope it'll help full.

Cheers.

[matt232]

Thanks Prime but thats not what I was refering to and I wasn't trying to boot ESXi from a Hard drive. In fact all I had to do was remove the raid card and once again the server booted and started ESXi on flash without an issue.

The Poweredge T110 will not boot beyond the raid cards BIOS boot, the T110's BIOS does not support non-dell raid cards in it let alone get to the stage where it will boot an OS/Hypervisor from any storage on the raid card. There are other posts about this around various forums that you can find once you know what the issue is.

Unfortunately I didn't find this out until I was $200 out of pocket then another $200 to get the Dell Raid card.....posting in the hopes that others don't learn the expensive way like I did.

But as I said I haven't checked to see if this is an issue with the T310's BIOS and its interaction with Raid Card BIOSs.

[matt232]

Also I can't comment on if this is still a problem for Poweredge T110 II servers. They may work fine with non-dell raid cards.