Elgin Computer Guy

So the big project is gaining momentum… Last night I was finally ready to install the first server. (There will be 5 new servers in total - an SC860, 2-PowerEdge 2950’s and 2-PowerEdge 2970’s [64-bit].)

I fired up the first 2950, told it to boot from CD and began the Server 2003 install. It got to the part of asking where to install it and gave up the ghost because it couldn’t find a hard drive. Hmmmm…. I rebooted and used the Dell CD where it prepped the drive and gathered information, then it asked for the Server 2003 CD. I gave it the CD and it spit it out. I gave it a DVD and it didn’t like that either.

The customer is a Microsoft certified partner and MSDN subscriber so I don’t have retail CD’s. I then tried to boot directly from the Server install disks again, but this time I hit F6 to tell it I had a SCSI driver to install, but since the machine doesn’t have a floppy drive that didn’t work either.

After 20 years of doing server installs, I had to call Dell technical support. How embarrassing! I got a hold of a great technician named Duane who told me that the server wasn’t designed to do that and asked me if I could get my hands on a retail or OEM CD. At that time of night, there was no way that was going to happen, so he sent me links to a zip file that includes a batch file to create an ISO image of a boot CD that includes the SCSI and NIC drivers, then does sort of a fake reboot to any bootable CD instead of insisting on a retail version of Server 2003. (Was that the longest sentence ever written?)

It was a bit of a convoluted process, but not all that difficult and it allowed me to do the fresh install from the MSDN DVD. After getting it to recognize the NIC’s and the SAS (serial attached SCSI) card I got to “play” for a few minutes. HOLY CRAP! This thing is blazing. It’s got 4 gig of RAM, so that helps, but it’s so fast it’s almost scary. I did a couple of file copies that I expected to take a minute or so, but there was never a dialog box… preparing to copy, etc. I thought it didn’t work, so I tried copying again then realized the files had been copied. It just happened so fast that it appeared to be instantaneous.

I’m really looking forward to trying those 64-bit servers with 8 gigs of RAM. I probably should wear a seatbelt when I use them.

I got it to recognize the LTO4 autochanger and installed Backup Exec. Blazing fast again - the limitation is definitely the network, not the device. Maybe I should have insisted on going to gigabit ethernet, too.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 11:41 am and is filed under Tech Talk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.