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5628
June 24th, 2008 21:00
How do I make newly upgraded RAM usable?
I recently upgraded the memory configuration on 4 of my PowerEdge 1950s from 16 to 32 GB. I purchased 32x EDGE 4GB PC25300 ECC 240 PIN FB DIMM DR X4 and swapped all sticks in each host (4x 8x4). The bios registers 32 GB, and I even used a third party tool to verify the slots, sticks, and configuration. Unfortunately on 3 of the 4 servers (of course the production ones), the OS (Win 2K3 Enterprise, SP2) still only reports 16 GB. This has to be an OS setting, but I haven't found anything obvious. I am at a loss. Any ideas?
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Gary Field
17 Posts
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June 25th, 2008 08:00
The PE1950 offers support for 4GB memory modules, which must be FB DDRII DIMMs - in keeping with official support policies, Dell will only guarantee hardware which is purchased directly from themselves. However, the fact that 1 of the PE1950s is reporting all the newly installed memory correctly & also that the BIOS on all 4 servers recognizes 32GBs correctly, would suggest that this memory will work fine in those servers. The first thing that I would check is the system BIOS settings (F2) of the problem servers, sounds like the memory mirroring or memory sparring option might be enabled. To check this go to the "Memory Information" section of the BIOS & ensure that the Redundancy option is disabled.
http://support.euro.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/pe1950/en/hom/pdf/html/syssetup.htm#wp1054611
Other than that, the only other thing that I can suggest is to compare the Boot.ini file from the working server & a problem server, to ensure that there is not some sort of switch in use which limits the amount of memory seen by the OS.
dcampus
2 Posts
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June 26th, 2008 20:00
Thanks Gary. Turns out I had a conflict between two boot.ini switches. For posterity...