Hi,

To bypass the raid, remove the Scsi cable from the Raid controller and connect it to the Ultra2/LVD connector on the motherboard shown in the graphic at this link:
http://docs.us.dell.com/docs/systems/scham/html/en/it/system.htm

Complete documentation for the PowerEdge 2300 can be found here:
http://docs.us.dell.com/docs/systems/scham/html/en/it/index.htm 

FYI, The raid controller in this system is the PowerEdge Expandable Raid Controller 2, sometimes known as the Perc 2/qc. This is a high end 4 channel controller. Documentation can be found here:
http://docs.us.dell.com/docs/storage/obsidian/

Specific documentation for the Configuration Utility is here:
http://docs.us.dell.com/docs/storage/obsidian/ins-gde/en/appb.htm#997995

Thanks very much for your help. I am functional (at least) until I can get up to speed on RAID. (It looks like RAID 1 with one container covering the first two 4 gig drives is what I need, with the other drives as spares.) Will all variants of Linux work on this system, as opposed to just RedHat? I would like to use some of the other disks for that, if possible.

Hi,

Red Hat is the only Linux variant we have installed on PowerEdge Servers, however I see many reports on the forums about other distributions. I just depends if there are drivers for the Perc 2/qc available for the version you would like to install.

All of the other hardware on the PowerEdge 2300 should be compatible with most Linux variants.