PowerEdge 1800 - Attempting install Windows Server 2012

True - the 1800 processors do not support VT, so Hyper-V is out.  ESXi 3.5 might be an option, as I believe it was the last version not to require VT.

What were you using before?  If you were running Hyper-V before, I'm not sure this 1800 is an "upgrade".

Usually, the CD/DVD driver message indicates a bad OS DVD.  I'm not exactly sure I followed the last part of your post.  You said you were getting that CD/DVD driver message, but then you said that the CERC driver worked (it should NOT work for this message - it is usually bad media, but if it is legit, then it is talking about the optical/DVD drive, which would never be hooked up to the CERC) and you could see the drives ... so, I'm not exactly sure what the issue is ...

Hi fysicus,

Running all of those server roles on an 1800 might be too stressful on the hardware for good performance. Is your OS media a volume license burned copy or a retail media copy? Sometimes with burned copies the disk is not read properly, you may want to try burning at 1X or 2X and possibly downloading the ISO file again.

"Running all of those server roles on an 1800 might be too stressful on the hardware for good performance."

It certainly is if you plan to run ANY VM's on it.  With only a single processor and 3GB of RAM, running everything but the VM's is too much and running only VM's is probably going to be too much.  I would consider adding a second processor and at least 3GB more RAM and either doing the VM's OR everything else, but not both.

Thank you all for your replies. I seem to have been lacking in clarity. :-)

The issue

For the install I'm basing myself on the following description: http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/servers/f/1466/p/19476428/20230799.aspx

As described there at some point I get a message telling me I need 2 install a device driver, normal as since the raid controller used in the PowerEdge 1800 system is not supported by default in Windows Server 2012.

In fact, there is no native driver for windows Server 2012, I'm expected to use the old Windows Server 2008 x64 driver.

I downloaded the driver from the Dell website, put it on a usb stick and inserted the stick in to the machine. Clicking on the browse button I noticed - as was expected - that none of my hard disks had been recognized.

Windows recognizes the driver and displays it as compatible with my hardware, so far so good. I load the driver, but instead of continuing to the next step I get a new popup telling me that no new devicce drivers have been found and that I need to select a location to more drivers.

However, this time when I click on the browse button to select new location my hard disks are presents in the listings, so... my raid controller was properly recognized and installed.

At the moment I'm at a loss.... I can imagine I need to install more drivers, but whatever I do it doens't change anything, I keep on getting the same nagging popup.

I haven't yet checked wether or not I have an actual DVD drive, or a CD Drive, but... the setup starts up, I think I can assume then I have a DVD drive? Or am I mistaken.

I'm not using a retail DVD, I burned an ISO I got from my Microsoft Partner account to a DVD.

I'll try to install it from a usb stick next... it's an old machine

Server roles and performance

Originally I used a simple old desktop I bought back in 2008. Also a single processor, and 3 GB ram. It did support hyper-V hower. I never actually worked on the machine, using hyper-v so I could run Oracle server, Linux and a bunch of other stuff when I needed 2. I always had at least 1 VM running.

I'm trying to convince my friend to offer me another server, one with a bit more power under hood, to exclusively use for VM usage.

"no new device drivers have been found"

So, I have found this to occur MOST often when the drivers are delivered via floppy disk.  Floppies are notoriously unreliable and it often requires a fresh format and re-copying files to it.  I know you aren't using a floppy disk to load the drivers, but I would look at the possibility that the files were corrupted during the download/extraction/copying process.  It may also be a problem with the overall compatibility of the 2008 drivers with 2012 - good enough to recognize drives but not good enough to read/write reliably.  Also, if the media you are using is bad, it can manifest itself as needing drivers (very common with 2008/Vista and later media), so re-downloading and, as Josh suggested, re-burning the disk (possibly even trying a different machine, burn speed, software, etc.).

I support your next step of installing via USB, as a test ... the 1800 is old but will still boot to USB (must insert the USB first, then boot to BIOS to bump in boot sequence).  You can put the drivers on that USB.  You might also consider "unlocking" the file before extracting (right-click, Properties, Unlock), then extracting (not commonly needed, but I have seen similar issues).

The 1800 is considerably older than your "old" desktop ... probably shipping in 2005/2006, so your desktop from 2008 probably will best your 1800 in most categories (cores, FSB, memory type/speed, disk speed, etc.) in its current configuration.

After my USB install also failed I decided to try my luck with Windows Server 2008 R2 and to forget about Windows Server 2012 for the time being.

Still using the tutorial I mentioned earlier on this approach appeared to work. Windows Server 2008 R2 accepted the driver for my RAID controller and allowed me to access the hard disks.

As expected, I wasn't able to install Hyper-V, luckily, I did manage to find a "current" working alternative for: Virtual Box!

Though this setup does serve my purposes in many ways, I still have 1 issue: I can't have my VM's launched @ boot-time. So, whenever I reboot my machine I have to logon, and manually restart each one of the VM's.

Not a big issue though. :-D

Since it is an relatively old machine, performance isn't what it needs to be to allow me to use the server as "test system" for my web & database applications, my friend however was generous enough to provide me a 2nd, more performant machine. I played with the idea to forget about the Old PowerEdge, but the 2nde machine is a rack server and bit too noisy to run 24/7 in my appartment.

Thanks to everyone for helping me out. :-)