iDrac6 Remote GUI

Hello,

Do you know if you have the iDRAC Express, or the iDRAC Enterprise? I ask because the remote console feature is a function of the Enterprise license only. Based on your description, it sounds like you do have the Enterprise license, but I would still check to confirm. 

The screenshot you mention should be clickable, which should launch a Java window. Are you saying that you can launch that application, but keyboard and ouse pass through fails? If that's the case, it's probably an issue with a port being blocked. You didn't list your firmware version for the iDRAC, but I'm fairly certain it won't matter for purposes of a port check. Page 26 of the manual will show you all of them that you'll need open.

https://dell.to/2ZI40cc

I have access now Do you know if I remove the fans from this system, it cud hurt anything? their noise is driving me nuts, btw from the moment I closed the led, they are working slower

Hello Again I had a chance to finally boot this thing up and I got this error, which eventually causes system to not find my two SAS drives, So I removed the raid controller and the error went away, but I still can't see my hard drives obviously.. what should I do? you think order a new "Perc 6I PCI-E X8 SAS RAID"? where should I find the firmware file so I can update my firmware(I searched I cudn't find any downloads for R710)? how many different components on this server have a firmware? I know iDrac6 has a firmware, Motherboard bios should have too I guess..

Here is the support page for the R710. You can use it to source all the firmware and driver downloads.

https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/product/poweredge-r710/drivers

As for the error, I would reseat both the PERC and the DIMM it uses for cache, if it is removable. If not, replacing the PERC would be the next step. I replaced my PERC 6i with an H700 recently, and was able to do so fairly cheaply.

I have two 250GB SAS drives installed

1)Aside from bios upgrade, what other components I can upgrade?

2)When I startup for the first time, it said you don't have any virtual drives and you need to create some, it forwarded me to this setup window, I didn't have any option other than choosing raid 0 or 1, is that because I am using a raid controller? somebody told me if you do raid 0, you might lose everything in case one of your hard drives fails, so you should consider to use two independent disks, well if it fails yes but it won't, but how should I do that anyway? I know raid is better, specially raids above 1, but I wanna learn to do the independent as well

3) after the setup during the boot it says "1 virtual drives found by bios", how can I have 2 virtual drives? should I have 2 raid controllers?

thx a lot

1. Most of the major components will have a firmware, IE each hard drive, the BIOS, the iDRAC, the network cards, etc.

2. If the only options you are seeing are RAID 0 and RAID 1, you'll either have a controller only capable of supporting those RAID levels, or there are just 2 drives installed. RAID 0 can be a bit riskier, because if 1 drive fails, the volume will fail and need to be recreated. RAID 0 would give you a performance increase, but does put you at more risk to data loss. RAID 1 would give you roughly the original performance, but the drives would be mirrors of each other. This means that while you won't see a performance improvement, you would have increased stability. Which is better depends on your use, but not many people use RAID 0 on a server. The few times I see it are with large companies doing 3D rendering of large files and they aren't particularly worried about if a drive were to fail.

3. A RAID controller can support multiple virtual disks, but the specifics would be determined by which controller you are using. Ideally, you'll want to be using a hardware controller, a PERC6 or an H700. an S series controller is a software controller, and is more of an entry level RAID option.