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9154
April 30th, 2008 15:00
Systems Build and Update Utility - Really Necessary?
Background
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I've got a few new PowerEdge 2950s I want to configure with WS 2003 R2 SP2. I just went through the installation process the Dell way. I was astonished to see that the procedure just goes ahead and installs the OS on a huge FAT32 partition (I dragged the slider all the way to the right.) and then converts it to NTFS. So, I wind up with 512 byte clusters. Are they kidding me?
Questions
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1. Is there a way for me to get the utility to create a nice, big NTFS partition in the first place and install to that?
2. If your answer to #1 is that I can just stick the WS2003 R2 SP2 disc in the drive and create the partitions the way I want them that way, then is there really any reason for me to use the Dell utility in the first place?
I've been admining a number of OEM-installed Dell servers with WS2000 and WS2003 on them for a while. I've installed an OS on only one of these servers, a PE2550. I just used the OS installation disc for that. And I haven't missed having the Dell OpenManage and other utilities on that system.
Somebody, please steer me toward some unbiased (not market-speak, please) information on the Dell software. Is it really a great advantage to me to have it on these systems?
DELL-Jeff M
2 Intern
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793 Posts
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April 30th, 2008 21:00
Thanks for posting! The main advantage of the install disks is that it puts all the drivers on the system for you. I have seen problems caused by the Microsoft default drivers that can be fixed by installing the Dell drivers. On some system/OS combinations, the Microsoft disks won't have the necessary drivers to see the PERC and therefore can't find the hard drives to install the OS on. You can just create the RAID array manually in the PERC, and install from the OS disks if you slipstream the PERC driver onto it. If you do that, make sure to install the Dell drivers, it will help keep your system stable.
If you are installing the OS on an older system like a 2650, the Build and Update Utility disk will also update the firmwares before setting up the new drivers for the install. If you use the OS disk with the latest PERC driver you can run into problems. Updating the firmware manually first can fix this, but that makes the whole procedure a more time consuming.
Grogg
81 Posts
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April 30th, 2008 22:00
I appreciate your response and the information, JeffLM.
I'm not really opposed to using the install disk, except for one thing -- that diabolical insistence on installing the OS on a FAT32 partition and then converting to NTFS. Would you know of any way to get around that behavior? Because it just drives me nuts. A 512 byte cluster size, to the best of my knowledge, is most certainly not optimal, for the health of the file system or for the performance of the operating system.
I'd be happy to find out I was wrong so that I could just take the easy road. The default NTFS cluster size when formatting a partition of any size is 4,096 bytes, and I've always been given to understand that there were solid reasons for choosing that cluster size as the default. Though file system fragmentation is, ostensibly, not a huge concern these days, using 512 byte clusters just seems to beg the question.
DELL-Jeff M
2 Intern
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793 Posts
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May 4th, 2008 22:00