hello there and welcome back to another
video in today's video I've got
something that's going to be a little
bit awkward to film but that I think is
going to be really interesting to mess
with let me just get this thing up onto
the desk to see if I can get it in frame
first if you haven't recognized what
this is yet it's an old rack mount
server specifically it's a Dell r720
it's pretty darn massive and weighs
about 45 lb which makes it a little hard
to maneuver in a tighter area such as my
workbench opening it up let's take a
look at what's inside This Server it's
got two CPUs I'm not yet sure which ones
they are as the listing that I bought
this one from didn't mention the CPUs it
came with in fact I took a little bit of
a risk with this server as it was listed
under the four parts are not working
section and the only real bit of
description was that the system wouldn't
post because there was no Ram in it past
that it was untested though for the
price I paid after shipping I thought
that I might as well give it a go
because it'll at least be a fun project
I don't work in it and I never have
worked in it because of that I've pretty
much never ran into Enterprise Hardware
such as rackmount servers like this d r
720 that I've got so there's definitely
going to be at least a minor learning
curve to some of the features on this
but I'm excited to check it out and see
what we can do with this thing the fans
in this thing are pretty sweet to start
out with we're going to have to find out
how loud they're going to be when I'm
working on this system as they probably
won't be quiet another thing that's
interesting in This Server are all of
these placeholder fake dim modules I'm
not 100% sure on the purpose of these
but I believe it's either one of two
things or even both these modules are
maybe in here to just protect the empty
dim slots or maybe also to provide a
little more resistance for the air flow
in the server if only a few slots are
populated and the rest are blank a lot
of the air from the fans is going to go
through the empty space where there
isn't any Ram rather than the CPU heat
sinks so putting these faux Ram modules
in directs more air over the heat sinks
and therefore gets the CPUs cooled
better but that's just my theory if you
know exactly what these are doing in
here let me know in the comments because
I wasn't able to find a definitive
answer for some reason moving towards
the back of the main section of the
chassis this system's got a bunch of
pcie cards of some kind in it so let's
take a look at what we've got here it
looks like these cards are some dual
Port SFP cards of some kind two of them
were even stuffed with some 8 gbit per
second finar transceivers it turns out
that these cards are qlogic qle 2562
fiber channel cards which is a standard
I've only now learned about these cards
though looking like network cards are
actually hbas or host bus adapters I've
got some more on this in a future video
by the way so stay tuned for that if
you're at all interested all right now
let's see if we can boot this machine up
as I mentioned before the eBay listing
says that the system didn't come with
any Ram so I went out and bought four 16
GB sticks of DDR3 ECC Ram one benefit I
can see to having an older server such
as this one is actually that it uses
this kind of ram it's incredibly
abundant on eBay and is also stupidly
cheap I paid about $40 for this 64 gig
kit of 1866 MHz DDR3 ECC RAM and all the
sticks were brand new as well another
thing that I want to take a look at
before turning this system on is the set
of power supplies that are in here I
received this server with dual 750 W 80
plus Platinum power supplies these
supplies are pretty sweet they're
impressively efficient and output a
decently high amount of power at least
in this server's configuration they're
also redundant and hot swappable which
means that if one unit fails the other
will handle the server until someone
comes along and removes the dead unit
and replaces it the whole time the
server can stay powered on and working
which is a really neat feature though it
is anything but uncommon in Enterprise
applications also the childish side of
me enjoys the way that they slide in and
out of the server I don't know I just
like plugging them in almost like SFP
connectors there's something weirdly
satisfying about
it I'll quickly run over what's present
on the front of the server though there
isn't a ton to talk about here my server
came configured with a set of eight 2
and 1/2 in SAS Bays I believe that this
system can be configured with another
set of these 2 and 1/2 in bays and maybe
also some 3 and 1/2 in Bays though I'm
not 100% sure if that's available on the
r720 but I do know it's available on the
r720 XD with a keyboard mouse power and
video hooked up to this system I hit the
power button and it started to power up
it stayed on configuring memory for only
a moment and then switched over to
initializing idra which is Dell's Remote
Management interface it stayed on the
screen for about 2 minutes and then it
gave up and rebooted at this point the
server also got a lot angrier than it
had previously been and being in the
room with it wasn't the most Pleasant
thing it sounded like the fans were
pined to 100% it then went through the
exact same memory and ID steps and I
never confirmed that it conf figured and
seemingly the server gave up trying
again and moved on in its startup
sequence this time I then told it to
boot into the BIOS by pressing F2 and
after looking around in the bios for a
bit the only thing I really discovered
was that I was unable to save any
changes I made and the two CPUs we've
got are Intel Zeon E5 2650s not V2s not
v3s Etc no these are the v1s which just
show up as a zero because they're the
first ones these CPUs are of the Sandy
Bridge architecture which you may also
know as Intel's second generation core
series CPUs such as the
i72600 all right with my small Venture
into this system's bios completed I went
ahead and let the system go past the
BIOS to see what would happen I was
almost certain that there was no storage
in the system but then the server ended
up booting into VMware which is a type 1
hypervisor I then went ahead and shut
off the server then plugged a SATA SSD
into one of the SAS ports on the front
of the server usually SAS controllers
should work fine with SATA drives though
not the other way around meaning that
SATA controllers cannot work with SAS
drives I'm going to try to install
Windows not because running Windows on a
server is a good idea or because I want
to but instead because I've got some
plans to mess with this server doing
non-server things before I make it do
real server things with a more sensible
OS and setup booting into the install
media was no issue whatsoever after
telling the server to boot into the BIOS
boot menu which then allowed me to
select the USB stick instead of whatever
was providing the VMware instance after
getting to the drive selection page and
the windows installer I was unable to
find my 128 gig SSD but there were a ton
of tiny partitions of something
somewhere which I deemed to likely be
the storage medium that the VMware
install was on so clearly a few things
are apparent now there's some kind of an
issue with the idck interface that makes
it not initialize and therefore caus the
server to take several minutes to boot
there's also VMware somewhere in this
system additionally there seems to be
some issues with the BIOS that is
denying me the ability to save any
settings I want to change and finally
the SAS Bay up front won't work with my
SATA drives as I thought they would with
this known I went ahead and started
pulling Parts out of the server to try
and find where on Earth the VMware
install was stored is there some kind of
emmc storage on the motherboard a drive
that's just oddly hidden I'm a newbie
when it comes to server Hardware so I
have no clue what's happening here and I
want to find out after pulling out all
of the pcie and riser cards I found the
culprit the little dual SD module which
was populated with two 2 GB Kingston SD
cards I plugged these cards into another
system and found out that they are in a
mirrored configuration where both of the
cards had the the same files on them
well that's one of our problems figured
out because now we know where the VMware
instance was installed with that done I
went ahead and booted back into the BIOS
to see if I could figure out anything
that was happening with the ID issue in
the system setup menu the system was
telling me that the ID was not ready
because its configuration values could
not be accessed it was also notable that
the life cycle controller was disabled
which based on a little research that I
did seems to be due to the ID's problems
at this point it was pretty clear that
idra wasn't just being being weird and
instead it had a genuine problem with
some part of its system I'm going to
have to place another reminder here that
this is my first Hands-On with a proper
server which in this case really means
that this is the first time I've ever
seen idak I may get a few things wrong
but I've tried to research and
understand what's happened here as good
as I really can I did some digging
online and found that this issue of the
idra module malfunctioning and causing
exceptionally long boot times as well as
other errors on the Dell r720 isn't
uncommon the first solutions that I
found weren't the nicest of solutions as
they all boiled down to the motherboard
is cooked the idck module on the Dell
r720 motherboard or at least the
motherboards of these r 720s that people
are talking about with this issue have
the idak modules soldered directly onto
them in some other Dell servers the itag
module can be removed and replaced
however with this r720 Dell lovingly
removed that option and therefore the ID
module is soldered straight onto the
motherboard and cannot be replaced this
means that obvious obviously I couldn't
have tried replacing the ID module so I
had to do a little more digging online
which is when I found some people who
claim that these ID issues can be caused
by a firmware update gone wrong and I
found a few things to try based on that
a couple of things that people suggested
seemed like more simple stuff such as
clearing the NV Ram which didn't do
anything as well as restarting the idck
which also didn't do anything it was at
this point that I realized that the I
button on the back of the server
wouldn't light up at all under any
circumstance there was no light emitted
from that button and no response from
pressing it so it really wouldn't do
anything even the eye button on the
front of the chassis didn't function
whatsoever and also the LCD was entirely
off in fact I thought my server didn't
even come with the LCD because it Blends
into the surrounding black plastic so
well when it's not working but this
added even more layers to the issue once
I realized that the LCD wasn't working I
also of course threw in a couple basic
things while I was working on this issue
such as booting up the system with all
the expansion cards removed as well as
trying to clear the seamos there's a
couple more that haven't been mentioned
here but I'm just trying to hit the more
interesting and critical things I tried
so as not to bore you with the simple I
checked the seos battery voltage and I
unplugged it and plugged it back in
again I also flashed the BIOS on the
server to the latest version by the way
which didn't change the behavior the
most promising thing that I was able to
find on this was this article by Dell on
how to recover idra with firm IMG D7 the
basic procedure for this was to get the
ID firmware and then extract The Firm
IMG D7 file from it and then you could
place that file onto an SD card and
insert it into the server from there you
should be able to fix the idax firmware
however even after putting it on an SD
card that was formatted correctly and
everything I was unable to get it to
work the last thing I was able to find
documentation on was the inbuilt uart
interface on the idra system apparently
you can solder onto this and extract
some data and maybe even Flash the emmc
storage that stores the IR firmware but
as I looked into it more I relatively
quickly realized that I likely wouldn't
be able to get any results from it I'm a
big advocate for trying something even
if you are pretty sure you're going to
fail but I decided that this wasn't
something I was going to try because I
couldn't find sufficient documentation
and with what little I had I realized
that I'd have absolutely no clue what
was going on at all throughout the
process so it wouldn't have even been a
learning experience in the end it would
have been blindly following instructions
with no clue what I was actually doing I
did some more digging on this issue
that's unimportant really and almost
certainly some that I've forgotten as
this video was filmed about a month
before writing this script due to other
videos taking priority so it's been a
while but I certainly remember spending
upwards of 15 hours researching and
trying to fix this issue to no avail as
much as I did not want to replace the
motherboard considering it's 90%
functional I decided that it would be
the right option for me even though I
don't necessarily plan to use IR the
issues that it's causing the system
aren't issues that I want to be dealing
with when making some future videos on
this server and then eventually
deploying it for some home labbing so a
while later the new motherboard that
cost me about $70 arrived and it was
time to get it installed during this
motherboard installation was when I
really appreciated the modularity of
these servers which I haven't commented
on too much yet almost the entire
process was screwless removing the fan
shout and fan assembly was incredibly
easy and so was removing the pcie cards
and their risers the only expansion card
that needed a screwdriver was the four
port 1 GB per second Dell networking
daughter board which was also quite easy
to take out with just two screws
securing it the power supplies were also
easy to pull as they're released through
a small lever at the back and then they
can just slide out cables were nicely
labeled most of the time and there
weren't any instances of the cables
being exceptionally hard to deal with
removing the ram was well removing Ram
though I would actually like to point
out that this board was in worse shape
than I originally thought it was it
obviously had some issues with some of
its components but when I removed a ram
stick one of the latches on the side of
the dim just fell off in my hand and
many others were close to detaching as
well which is far less than ideal
furthermore although I didn't get a shot
of it when I removed the RAID controller
board from the server to set it aside
the new board came with a RAID
controller as well the clips that are
used to remove it both fell off as I
pressed against them to release it maybe
getting the new board for this system
shouldn't feel as unnecessary as it
originally did did after unscrewing the
two heat sinks I revealed the two zons
that we had in the system as well as
some pretty wet thermal paste that's not
too surprising to me due to how cool
these servers are meant to run and the
likelihood that this server had its
thermal paste replaced at some point in
its lifetime with the CPUs pulled
everything that I needed from the old
board had been taken and I could remove
it now this is the point where I
discovered what I think to be the
coolest mechanism in this entire server
man having a mechanism like this on
desktop computers could be really
convenient anyway to get the board out
of the server all you have to do is pull
up a little locking pin Slide the board
towards the front of the server using
the blue handle and then you can lift it
right on out the only awkward part is
getting the board out around the cables
and it's relatively tight fit with the
case with the new board installed I
removed the paper socket covers I placed
on it due to the seller's boldness to
ship it without any socket protection
and installed the CPUs I hooked the
cabling back up applied thermal paste
and screwed down the heat sinks and past
this point it was really just the
disassembly and pretty much perfect
reverse order I put the ram back in
replaced the networking daughter card
PCI Express risers fans and lastly the
PCI E cards with the board replaced I
powered up the system and after it
displayed initializing ID for a while I
was gifted with the sweet sight of the
system completing its initialization
furthermore the eye buttons and lights
were working correctly and the LCD was
displaying the system was also now doing
more and more stuff that it never had
before such as some power configurations
and a bunch of messages about the system
which I both believe to be caused by the
life cycle controller now functioning my
SATA drive still wouldn't recognize in
the front SAS Bay but that just means
we'll have to borrow the SATA that's
connected to the inbuilt DVD drive when
it comes time to mess around on This
Server by doing things that it wasn't
really intended to do however that's
going to wait until next time so stay
tuned for the other couple videos I plan
to do on this server today the only goal
was to get it started up and working
which means that this is all I've got
for you this time I hope that you were
able to at least enjoy this video and
maybe even learn a thing or two in any
case I hope to see you next time goodbye