So I feel I should have found the solution to this already but I’m also new and using a not idea set of HHDs as they’re just random drives from normal pcs. I had hoped to just throw them in whatever cheap server I found and after working through different issues like some ram slots may be bad or might be the ram, new ram coming, or the raid card battery? was unplugged I’m sure to keep it from getting drained too quickly while the server was in storage.
With no errors now, I was hoping I could start playing with the storage but still, no physical disks show up in the raid configurator or proxmox.
It is a 2950 PowerEdge Dual Cpu dual-core zeon, I’m guessing it’s the OG but I haven’t been able to figure out how to tell which 2950 if that matters. Like I said above the rest of the drives are just random drives from old windows computers, none are wiped if that matters. The rest of the system is as it came to me, no BIOS update nor any other updates. Another thing I can throw out is a couple of drives are shucked from usb backups a 2TB and 3TB but there’s also one straight old 500GB windows drive so I hoped at least that one should show up.
I figured I have time until the SSD and ram come in, in a couple of days, so I could see if anyone could point me to the likely obvious wrong I am committing.
Wendell, you’ve made me into this, I now want to build up my own server/cloud. Maybe if Starlink (when it gets here in Sept) can make my internet usable I’ll be able to leave my main system here and stream it to the office if I ever go back into the office). a boy can dream
What I want to know is this:
Are you trying to set up drives through a RAID controller, and if so, are you trying to set up something like RAID 5?
If it’s through the RAID card, you will most likely have to boot into the RAID controller interface and set up the drives from there,
There is also something called Dell OpenManage which maybe could be used for setting up the drives on a Poweredge server.
That would suck really, really badly.
If he isn’t going to do raid, he should avoid a raid controller at all cost.
Alternatively one could look for a passthrough mode.
Read the text messages as they scroll on the screen during boot-up. You’re probably being prompted to enter the PERC RAID configuration screen. You need to do that to configure your drives.
You won’t be able to view the contents of any of them. The controller will wipe them and install a RAID signature before you’ll be able to see the drives in the OS.
As I recall, 2GB is the limit of the controller in the 2950s so your 3TB drive is right out, won’t work no matter what you do.
SSDs aren’t a great idea, either. TRIM commands won’t work through the RAID card, so your performance will degrade and the life of the disks will be shortened. Some have reported positive results with under-provisioned SSDs, but I’d suggest sticking to enterprise SAS SSDs myself, and it’ll be quite a trick shopping around for something sure to be compatible with that absolutely ancient, heat-belching old server.
If the drives show up in the raid configuration, maybe look at raid5?
If you want software raid, then maybe get a HBA card?
If the drives don’t show up, it might be the cables or backplane? But they are harder to diagnose
I am trying to, at this point, see any physical disk in the RAID controller or in the OS I was looking to install. A passthrough would be fine while I am learning. I have booted into the RAID controller interface as well as Proxmox OS and neither see any physical disks. I could look at the Dell OpenManage software, I believe It throws up a note about it before I go into the RAID controller or boot into the Proxmox installer.
fun stuff, I do get flashy lights on the drive sleds when it first boots up, before they give up, but I suppose that could be coming from elsewhere. I guess I’ll start looking at the cables to the RAID controller and backplane later.
The solution is!.. confusingly labeled drive sleds… I noticed that the HHDs were not making contact with the backplane after taking a hard look inside…
So I switched the drive mounting holes to line up with the SAS callout and now everything shows up including the 3TB shucked drive. Btw both types of sled work despite having SAS called out on one and SATAU on the other.
So now I go on the hunt for an SSD sled…if it gets too expensive I’ll have the guys at work bend some scrap steel and make my own adapter.
Thanks for everyone’s help, lol lmk if I’m about to drive into a brick wall using the SAS holes for SATA drives. Feels like I’m sinning or something but drives showed up so I’m posting this and getting back to work. I read something about an interposer card but if it fits it sits right??
