Swapping out server hardware

Question

I have a few dell PowerEdge R710’s and would like to have a spare server encase one of my servers have a hardware issue. The disks are connected to a SAN. So if I have an issue, I would replace the fiber card into the replacement server. How do I know if the 2 server’s processors are compatible? In this case I have a INTEL XEON E5570 and E5504

Ryan-at-xbyte · Accepted Answer

There's no problem switching out CPUs. You can always go down to a lower end CPU. Where you have to be careful is upgrading to a better CPU. The R710 had a version 1 and version 2. The version 1 supports most CPUs, except some higher end 5600 series. We have never found an official list of which are supported. The version 2 will support all of them. If you want a backup R710, you will want to have one with the version 2 motherboard.

If you need another one, you can checkout companies like http://www.xbyte.com

Jerry_S · Answer

I have a lot of R710 servers, but the differences are in the Processor. I have INTEL XEON 5570, 5680, 5520 and 5650 Looking to see if I could get 1 server with a 5504 that would work with all of them. Not sure if it would work with both '4' core and '8' core? If I had a R710 with INTEL XEON 5570 (4 core 8 logical processors) and I replaced entire hardware with a R710 INTEL XEON 5680 (6 Core, 12 Logical Processors) would it still work?

Ryan-at-xbyte · Answer

The E5504 CPUs are cheap enough that you could keep buy a spare server with the E5570 CPUs and then have a spare set of the E5504 CPUs.  That would eliminate any potential issues.

Jerry_S · Answer

Thanks Ryan for the info!!!!

PowerEdge Hardware General

Swapping out server hardware

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