Wow. I'm getting a server.

For free. Wow. My wife's boss's boss knows that I'm studying toward my MCSA and is having his IT department put together a server for me to help set up my home lab.

Life has been difficult lately, been going through a lot of things of which one of the outcomes has resulted in me having to rapidly switch career tracks, so having someone reach a hand out to help me back on my feet is amazing.

I don't know what the specs are on it yet, but it's coming home TONIGHT, so I'll post back and let you know.

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Comments

Silver Bullet

Nice!

Congrats and good luck on the journey!

vCole

Wow awesome! Congrats!

aquageek

Thanks, this is going to really come in handy when I start working on 70-290 and 291. Currently working on 270.

NetAdmin2436

Sweet! There's many people struggling, so just hang in there.

Friend: Hey, do you want this extra piece of equipment? We don't need it on our network anymore.

NetAdmin2436: What is it?

Friend: I don't know.

Netadmin2436: SURE!

Bokeh

Thats great. Make sure he is on your Xmas List from now on.

dynamik

That sounds like a nice break. Congratulations!

NetAdmin2436 wrote: »

Sweet! There's many people struggling, so just hang in there.

Friend: Hey, do you want this extra piece of equipment? We don't need it on our network anymore.

NetAdmin2436: What is it?

Friend: I don't know.

Netadmin2436: SURE!

*The next day*

Friend: No one can log in anymore...

jbaello

Start configuring Hyper-V or VMWare on it

good to get your feet wet on your whole study and getting familiar with virtualization...

NetAdmin2436

dynamik wrote: »

*The next day*

Friend: No one can log in anymore...

NetAdmin2436: Yeah, it looks like it was your Domain Controller. You didn't have an Administrator password set, so I was able to log in with a blank password. I suppose you want it back.

Friend: No, I just got fired. Can I come work with you?

NetAdmin2436: ......Let me check, NOPE!

aordal

Install ESXi /nod

skrpune

sweet, that's awesome!!

aquageek

OK, had to wait a day for it but I got it. Haven't had a chance to set it up yet but I'm told it has a 3 Ghz Dual Core cpu, and I checked out the HDs - (2) x Seagate Cheetah Ultra320 146Gb, 10k RPM.

's it so far! Pretty sweet.

Addendum: Oh, and 6Gb RAM

dynamik

Nice! That should be sufficient for the MCSA

blargoe

That's awesome.

One the other hand, how can you just GIVE a server like that away?...

tiersten

blargoe wrote: »

That's awesome.

One the other hand, how can you just GIVE a server like that away?...

I've thrown out equipment that had a higher spec than that before. If nobody wanted it then it got disposed of. I have enough trouble with space for existing in operation equipment

We have to actually pay to have equipment disposed due to a law. Taking it off them might actually be doing them a favour.

skrpune

tiersten wrote: »

I've thrown out equipment that had a higher spec than that before. If nobody wanted it then it got disposed of. I have enough trouble with space for existing in operation equipment

We have to actually pay to have equipment disposed due to a law. Taking it off them might actually be doing them a favour.

if you ever need help "disposing" of any other equipment, I'd be more than happy to help you out! My fees are very reasonable!

@aquageek, MAN that's quite the system they built for you! So, um, are you sure there's not some fine print that says you have to hand over your soul to them once you get that MCSA?

aquageek

skrpune wrote: »

if you ever need help "disposing" of any other equipment, I'd be more than happy to help you out! My fees are very reasonable!

@aquageek, MAN that's quite the system they built for you! So, um, are you sure there's not some fine print that says you have to hand over your soul to them once you get that MCSA?

Hehehe, you know, even if there is I'm ok with it. They'd be amazing to work for!

skrpune

true, anybody who gives servers away like that is pretty cool in my book.

snadam

wow, thats not bad for FREE! congrats, have fun, and best of luck during your studies.

aquageek

Thanks

Having a bit of a problem getting an OS installed on it. The BIOS isn't seeing the two SCSI drives... any suggestions?

snadam

Assuming we are talking about a Windows OS, Are you hitting F6 in the begining of the OS installation to load any RAID/SCSI drivers. Put the drivers on a floppy, etc, etc...

ALSO,
what kind of array controller do you have in there? You might have to set up your logical drive/s before you continue installing an OS.

aquageek

Yeah, windows OS, I didn't hit F6 to load RAID/SCSI drivers. This area is entirely new for me, so thanks for your patience.

When I start booting I hit F2 to get into BIOS and hit CTRL+A to get into the Adaptec SCSISelect. I have several settings:

1) Config./View SCSI controller Settings

2) Config./View Host RAID settings - when selected it counts up to 15 then displays "NO AVAILABLE DRIVE FOUND"

3) SCSI Disk Utilities - 15 count, lists "No device" except for SCSI ID #7 - ADAPTEC AIC-7902 (i'm assuming this is the controller?)

4) Disable (/Enable) HostRAID support.

Is any of this information helpful?

Should I go ahead and get the SCSI drivers, put on floppy, boot to CD with Windows OS and hit F6 to load SCSI drivers?

snadam wrote: »

Assuming we are talking about a Windows OS, Are you hitting F6 in the begining of the OS installation to load any RAID/SCSI drivers. Put the drivers on a floppy, etc, etc...

ALSO,
what kind of array controller do you have in there? You might have to set up your logical drive/s before you continue installing an OS.

tiersten

aquageek wrote: »

2) Config./View Host RAID settings - when selected it counts up to 15 then displays "NO AVAILABLE DRIVE FOUND"

It should detect the drives. Are you sure they're plugged into that controller? Some servers have multiple SCSI controllers. You need to get the controller to detect your drives before you can proceed to installing Windows.

aquageek wrote: »

3) SCSI Disk Utilities - 15 count, lists "No device" except for SCSI ID #7 - ADAPTEC AIC-7902 (i'm assuming this is the controller?)

Yes

NetAdmin2436

OK, this might be tricky for you if your not familiar with this process.

First your gonna have to go to the manufactures website and download the SCSI drivers. So if it's a dell, go to dell.com, if it's HP, go to HP.com. Go to the support/driver download page and find your model. There's probably going to be number of different SCSI drivers, you'll have to probably open up your case and look what SCSI RAID controller you have. Once downloaded, you'll probably have to make a Floppy. Then during the install, hit f6 to specify the RAID drivers. Then the install will continue as normal.

EDIT: Sorry, got distracted and didn't refresh my screen...so I didn't see the prior 2 posts.

aquageek

NetAdmin2436 wrote: »

OK, this might be tricky for you if your not familiar with this process.

First your gonna have to go to the manufactures website and download the SCSI drivers. So if it's a dell, go to dell.com, if it's HP, go to HP.com. Go to the support/driver download page and find your model. There's probably going to be number of different SCSI drivers, you'll have to probably open up your case and look what SCSI RAID controller you have. Once downloaded, you'll probably have to make a Floppy. Then during the install, hit f6 to specify the RAID drivers. Then the install will continue as normal.

EDIT: Sorry, got distracted and didn't refresh my screen...so I didn't see the prior 2 posts.

Don't worry, I learn fast

Ok, opened up the chassis and the serverboard is "intel se7501wv2". There's a map on the inside cover of the chassis that shows a SCSI backplane board. There's one SCSI connector on there that is connected to the Server Board as shown on the map. I believe it's an embedded SCSI controller.

Looking at intel website for the tech. product specs. sheet (http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/se7501wv2/tps.pdf) I believe it's "Adaptec* AIC-7902W SCSI controller".

NetAdmin2436

I jumped the gun a little bit with my last post.

What Tiersten and Snadam are saying is that when you go into the SCSI controller settings (ctrl + A) it should detect the hard drives before we get to the windows install. So we need to figure out why your hard drives aren't being recognized. With hardware RAID you almost always set up the RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1, ect..) before you install windows. Software RAID is a different story. How many hard drives slots do you have? Are they in the same slots they were when you intially got the server?

aquageek

Ok, that makes sense.

I have 6 HD slots. The two scsi drives are in slot 0 and slot 1, that's where they were when I got the server...

aquageek

tiersten wrote: »

It should detect the drives. Are you sure they're plugged into that controller? Some servers have multiple SCSI controllers. You need to get the controller to detect your drives before you can proceed to installing Windows.

oooh, ok I got BIOS to detect the drives. When I start up and hit ctrl+A for the SCSI setup I get two options:

AIC-7902 A at slot 00 04:07:00
AIC-7902 B at slot 00 04:07:01

Selecting the first it doesn't detect the drives, selecting the second option does.

In the SCSISelect Utility menu when I select: Configure/View HostRAID Settings it checks for drives then displays:

ID:0 Type: Mirrored (R1) Vendor: Adaptec Product:System Size:147Gb Status Optimal

hitting enter to accept the option brings up a list of the two drives...

....now what? lol

NetAdmin2436

From what your saying, it sounds like they are mirrored (RAID 1) already, which is typically what you want with servers. Personally, I'd leave it how it is and start the Windows Install, hitting F6 to specify the SCSI drivers, ect...

*Note, you typically can not change the hardware RAID configuration after windows has been installed. There may be some SCSI controllers that let you do this, but all the ones I've seen won't let you without starting over and reformatting and performing a new installation.

aquageek

Ok, I have some questions.

When I chose between:

AIC-7902 A at slot 00 04:07:00
AIC-7902 B at slot 00 04:07:01

what exactly am I choosing between, and why does one detect the drives but not the other?

When I last tried to install windows it said no Hard Disks found, and aborted the setup. Do I need to do anything else other than specify the SCSI drivers?

I see an option to make the array "bootable". What exactly does that mean?

(It's a good idea for me to take Server+ isn't it? *nods*)

blargoe

1) The difference between slot A and slot B is probably the channel the disks are plugged into on the scsi card. Were there two connectors on the card where you plug in the cable? One is A, and the other is B.

2) If Windows Setup doesn't detect the drives, you need to go to the manufacturer's web site and get the driver for the scsi controller. They should have one that can be extracted onto a floppy. That is the one you need. When you go into Windows setup, hit F6 as soon as the blue text mode screen appears, and soon you will be prompted to install drivers. At that point you put in the floppy and you can select the driver.