Dell r710 help

[Oli1549]

Im currently running unraid on a old computer of mine, but have just bought a Dell R710 and has been delivered today.

 

I can not figuire out how the hell to get it to boot off a usb and to be able to view the RAID, there are disk in.

 

Oli

[palespartan]

To boot from usb mash f11 when booting and when in the boot menu you will hard drive as a boot option but when you use the arrow keys to highlight it, it will show usb as a boot option. To view raid pay attention as it is booting up and when it shows perc 6i controler (or something simular) it will also say to view config press [ctrl]+c or [ctrl] +r or something like that.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Id switch from unraid on a r710, esp with a raid card, Just install the os on the sd card or on one of the drives.

[Oli1549]

Just now, palespartan said:

To boot from usb mash f11 when booting and when in the boot menu you will hard drive as a boot option but when you use the arrow keys to highlight it, it will show usb as a boot option. To view raid pay attention as it is booting up and when it shows perc 6i controler (or something simular) it will also say to view config press [ctrl]+c or [ctrl] +r or something like that.

Ok, yeah there's my problem, I can't even see my RAID inside the config i don't think, i spam f11 and all i get is this: 

[Oli1549]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id switch from unraid on a r710, esp with a raid card, Just install the os on the sd card or on one of the drives.

What do you mean? I want unraid to make VM's Do my NAS, run Plex, openVPN etc. its been very good for me on my other machine.

[palespartan]

Open it up and check all the cables. And the raid card, if its not being seen by bios maybe even boot to bios and check those settings too.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Oli1549 said:

Ok, yeah there's my problem, I can't even see my RAID inside the config i don't think, i spam f11 and all i get is this: 

If you just go this reset the bios, usb boot could have been disabled.

 

You should see a perc menu pop up.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Oli1549 said:

What do you mean? I want unraid to make VM's Do my NAS, run Plex, openVPN etc. its been very good for me on my other machine.

Unraid its really ment for use without a raid card.

 

And there are many other hypervisors for running vms, and are much better at running vms with many more options and are free. Look at proxmox, esxi, and hyper-v server.

[palespartan]

Just now, Oli1549 said:

What do you mean? I want unraid to make VM's Do my NAS, run Plex, openVPN etc. its been very good for me on my other machine.

Running unraid on a system with a raid card in it instead of an HBA just isn't the greatest idea it puts you at a greater risk of data loss.

[Oli1549]

Just now, palespartan said:

Running unraid on a system with a raid card in it instead of an HBA just isn't the greatest idea it puts you at a greater risk of data loss.

this is a temp doing to make sure the server runs before my 14 day return ends. i plan on getting a HBA RAID card.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Oli1549 said:

this is a temp doing to make sure the server runs before my 14 day return ends. i plan on getting a HBA RAID card.

why not just get something like a linux live disk? That seems much better for testing a system.

[palespartan]

If you don't have a raid or HBA card in it now it wont detect the drives from the backplane.

[Oli1549]

Just now, palespartan said:

If you don't have a raid or HBA card in it now it wont detect the drives from the backplane.

i have a raid card in now, it is connected to a 150GB HDD

 

How do i get into BIOS to Reset it? this is new to me... 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Oli1549 said:

i have a raid card in now, it is connected to a 150GB HDD

 

How do i get into BIOS to Reset it? this is new to me... 

Just pop the battery out for a minute and it will be reset.

[palespartan]

to get into the bios and view boot options when booting it up press f2 and from there you can look at boot option and order and make sure it had raid card in there as well as usb option.

[palespartan]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Just pop the battery out for a minute and it will be reset.

This is the equivalent of clearing cmos on a motherboard. I personally would check bios settings first before doing this. In the bios there is usually an option to restore factory defaults and this is safer than poping the battery out.

[Oli1549]

5 minutes ago, palespartan said:

This is the equivalent of clearing cmos on a motherboard. I personally would check bios settings first before doing this. In the bios there is usually an option to restore factory defaults and this is safer than poping the battery out.

Couldnt find the default reset button but Internal USB was turned off, ive turned it on.

[beersykins]

What specific card do you have in there?  If you aren't getting a RAID configuration prompt at boot like CTRL+R  then either the card is missing or not working.    I've seen a few chassis with an empty expansion/RAID slot.

 

I have a few poweredge like 610, 720, 430 AMA

 

13 minutes ago, Oli1549 said:

i plan on getting a HBA RAID card

Which specific one?  Stating HBA and RAID at the same time is kind of contradictory.

[Oli1549]

Ok, so. I found some cyan coloured screen, the raid setup or something. i clicked some buttons not sure what and the hard drive is now a "virtual drive" and is showing up, i loaded through the drive and booted from usb which loaded unraid i believe.

[beersykins]

Which level did you select?  

 

Installing unraid on top of a RAID array probably isn't the most effective solution.

[palespartan]

2 minutes ago, Oli1549 said:

Ok, so. I found some cyan coloured screen, the raid setup or something. i clicked some buttons not sure what and the hard drive is now a "virtual drive" and is showing up, i loaded through the drive and booted from usb which loaded unraid i believe.

That would be your raid config screen. You will definitely want to get comfortable with it as that is how you configure drives for the system.

[Oli1549]

2 minutes ago, beersykins said:

Which level did you select?  

 

Installing unraid on top of a RAID array probably isn't the most effective solution.

it didnt give me a option, how can i change and which one too?

[Oli1549]

2 minutes ago, palespartan said:

That would be your raid config screen. You will definitely want to get comfortable with it as that is how you configure drives for the system.

In the config screen, here is whats there.

[Oli1549]

Could you tell me how to change the level of RAID in this menu? Ive got booted off the usb, and the drive is showing up in unraid and server is running.

 

[palespartan]

If you hit [ctrl] +N it brings you to the next page with config settings for virtual disks. But if you only have one drive in there the only option should be raid 0.