Hi,
I figured this to be a general question I have, primarily for those that might own or might know a little more about the Dell r720xd than I do.
I recently just purchased this server to start a new home server setup. The server came preinstalled with the H710P RAID card which I've already flashed to IT mode to make it a software RAID card. I bought an addon rear flex backplane for the 2 rear HDD slots and have 2 SSDs in a RAID1, that is going to be OS/KVM hypervisor exclusive. I purchased a second RAID card (9211-8i) that I was planning to use exclusively for the front backplane, the backplane is the 12x3.5" HDD configuration that I was going to do a virtual hardware passthrough to a TrueNAS VM, so it will be completely 'independent' from the base OS that I have installed, this secondary RAID card was preflashed with the IT firmware to allow software RAID as well.
Generally, the question I'm starting to ask myself is if what I'm attempting to do is even possible with the r720xd. Has anyone attempted to do the same thing? I currently have the rear flex backplane hooked directly into the PCIe HBA. During POST, the HDDs are detected and it's suggesting that there are boot options there, but going through the BIOs and doing attempted OS installations seems to be going contrary to what the BIOS POST is telling me since aside from the 9211-8i saying it has drives attached to it, nothing else seems to believe it does. If I plug the rear flex backplane into the frontback plane, which I believe is supposed to be the 'Dell supported method of rear flex installation', the system boots fine.
Ideally, I don't even want the 9211-8i to be my OS boot card, I want to have my OS installed and RAID1 configured using the H710P and have all my data managed by the 9211-8i, but attempting to attach a SAS cable between the 9211 and the front backplane appears to not function at all..
Appreciate any advice/comments/suggestions in advance.
Thanks
I figured this to be a general question I have, primarily for those that might own or might know a little more about the Dell r720xd than I do.
I recently just purchased this server to start a new home server setup. The server came preinstalled with the H710P RAID card which I've already flashed to IT mode to make it a software RAID card. I bought an addon rear flex backplane for the 2 rear HDD slots and have 2 SSDs in a RAID1, that is going to be OS/KVM hypervisor exclusive. I purchased a second RAID card (9211-8i) that I was planning to use exclusively for the front backplane, the backplane is the 12x3.5" HDD configuration that I was going to do a virtual hardware passthrough to a TrueNAS VM, so it will be completely 'independent' from the base OS that I have installed, this secondary RAID card was preflashed with the IT firmware to allow software RAID as well.
Generally, the question I'm starting to ask myself is if what I'm attempting to do is even possible with the r720xd. Has anyone attempted to do the same thing? I currently have the rear flex backplane hooked directly into the PCIe HBA. During POST, the HDDs are detected and it's suggesting that there are boot options there, but going through the BIOs and doing attempted OS installations seems to be going contrary to what the BIOS POST is telling me since aside from the 9211-8i saying it has drives attached to it, nothing else seems to believe it does. If I plug the rear flex backplane into the frontback plane, which I believe is supposed to be the 'Dell supported method of rear flex installation', the system boots fine.
Ideally, I don't even want the 9211-8i to be my OS boot card, I want to have my OS installed and RAID1 configured using the H710P and have all my data managed by the 9211-8i, but attempting to attach a SAS cable between the 9211 and the front backplane appears to not function at all..
Appreciate any advice/comments/suggestions in advance.
Thanks