PowerEdge R410 addon NIC card issue (Intel and the onboard Broadcom) - 10/11/2011

I haven't experienced anything similar to this.  So, are you using the Intel instead of the Broadcom?  If so, have you disabled the Broadcom NIC's in the BIOS?

That is to be expected, as client OS's are not supported on Dell servers, it could easily have been a driver/firmware issue/mismatch or some incompatibility with Windows 7.  You know, I had a consultant not long ago say that as "standard" practice, they order all Dell servers with Intel add-in NIC's because of the quality of the Broadcom chips.  I haven't in all my comings and goings (years of up-close and personal experience with hundreds of systems) with Dell hardware experienced anything that would justify such a viewpoint.  Anyway ... hopefully you won't have any more issues and it was just a bad card (Did they also replace the Intel card?).  

I am using the onboard Broadcom now, sending the Intel back.

I had disabled the NIC and was able to get the stutter to be gone if I did a load of Server 2008 R2 again.  If I kept the OS install I had, and disabled the Broadcom, I still saw the problem.  I had not tried taking out the Intel one (as I was hoping to use it) until yesterday which solves me problem no matter what OS I load on it.

I am being a little odd here and loading Windows 7 on the machine.  It has 64 GB of RAM and I needed Windows 7 on it for some testing to be done.  With the Intel out I loaded up Windows 7 just fine, and am having no issues whatsoever.

I loaded up Server 2008 R2 just so Dell would troubleshoot the problem with me.  They refused to support me loading Windows 7 on it.

Hmm ... that is odd.  I have several of these with the Intel NIC's ... I'll keep my eye on them for any issues, but I've seen none thus far.  Good luck.

Ooops,  not with Windows on it though.     The hosts run Vmware.

Interesting...     We have done this config on R415's no issues so far.    We have lots of 2950III's with this config.

It would be neat to see if a different dual port card would work.  

I think Kim is suggesting a hardware incompatibility so your experience with a similar config is relevant.

They gave me a replacement server, but it had the same issue.  It is the compatibility of this motherboard with the onboard NIC and the Intel card that seems to cause the problem.

I had a problem with some 2950's 3 years ago that we added Intel NICs to solve the issue and disabled the onboard NetExtreme II ones.  Since then, I always ordered Intel NICs along with the servers to save me the grief of weeks of troubleshooting on that issue back then.

They sent me a second server, with the Intel card.  All different hardware, and I ended up with the same results.  It might, it seems to be these specific cards.  Since you cannot alter the onboard one, choosing a different Intel one might work.  Dell did say it the onboard one needed this firmware update, even though it was listed as optional on their site.

I'm not saying that there is no chance of an incompatibility with the two chips, but if you ended up with a bad Intel card, replacing the entire server would not have helped.  Did they also replace the Intel card?  When doing a system exchange, they do not usually replace extras such as drives and expansion cards (unless you did a return and reorder).

can you describe the CPU stutter that you were seeing, how did you see it/reproduce it?

The mouse and keyboard would pause every few seconds, for about a second.  I looked at the CPU and it would be a jagged line up and down from 0% to 30% on only one of the CPU's.  The machine is dual CPU, and it would show up as the 1st or 9th of the 16 showing (quad core with hyper-threading so you see 16).  Checking processes would yield nothing, even the CPU time of processes did not show it after keeping it on like this over the weekend.  If you started pushing processes on the machine to get it busy, all the CPU's would start doing the jagged up and down.  They would follow each other exactly.  It was some sort of interrupt issue since it would stop you typing and NOT queue up what you had typed.  I have never seen this behavior before and I have been a Systems Admin here for almost 10 years.