Dell C6100 XS23-TY3 2U 4-Node (8 CPU) Cloud Server

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Jeggs101

Well-Known Member
Dec 29, 2010
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What do I need to use 2.5 SAS HDDs on the Dell C6100 XS23-TY3 besides the SAS Backplane?

Thanks in advance,
TF
A SAS controller would be one. The onboard ICH does not support SAS only SATA. There are some LSI cards for mezzanine slots though or could use half height pcie.

Do you have a 3.5" or 2.5" C6100 chassis? If 2.5" it is simply adding drives, the SAS controller and cables from the SAS controller to the midplane board. If 3.5 you need a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter
 

TimeFreedom

New Member
Oct 16, 2013
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A SAS controller would be one. The onboard ICH does not support SAS only SATA. There are some LSI cards for mezzanine slots though or could use half height pcie.

Do you have a 3.5" or 2.5" C6100 chassis? If 2.5" it is simply adding drives, the SAS controller and cables from the SAS controller to the midplane board. If 3.5 you need a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter
I have a 3.5" chassis so the 2.5" HDDs won't work without a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter and then I would also need sleds. I will stick with SATA HDDs, the conversion cost to SAS HDDs is more than I want to pay right now. Need to return the 10K SAS 2.5" HDDs and get SATA HDDs. Wish I would have done my homework before the purchase.
 
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tby

Active Member
Aug 22, 2013
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Snellville, GA
set-inform.com
Meant to swap memory with another node before I left for work this morning but forgot. dmidecode says that all of the odd-numbered slots are populated except for #7.
Swapped all the RAM from another node, same 20GB showing. Hopefully mrrackables will make good on the 60-day warranty.
 

Madhelp

Member
Feb 7, 2013
39
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I have a question for the hive. I've seen a post where someone mentioned that they wanted to use an Intel SAS expander in the C6100, I would love to do the same. I know one of the issues is getting power to the Intel RES2CV240 but tell me does this sound feasible: I noticed that the power supply controller board has 5 fan headers but only four fans. I believe these headers are 12v? Can I tap off the fan header and and run a wire into a molex connector and use that to power the SAS expander? Thanks gents!
 

PigLover

Moderator
Jan 26, 2011
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I have a question for the hive. I've seen a post where someone mentioned that they wanted to use an Intel SAS expander in the C6100, I would love to do the same. I know one of the issues is getting power to the Intel RES2CV240 but tell me does this sound feasible: I noticed that the power supply controller board has 5 fan headers but only four fans. I believe these headers are 12v? Can I tap off the fan header and and run a wire into a molex connector and use that to power the SAS expander? Thanks gents!
I doubt you'll get anything close to enough current off a fan header to drive that expander. Probably a good way to start a fire, though!
 

seang86s

Member
Feb 19, 2013
164
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I have a question for the hive. I've seen a post where someone mentioned that they wanted to use an Intel SAS expander in the C6100, I would love to do the same. I know one of the issues is getting power to the Intel RES2CV240 but tell me does this sound feasible: I noticed that the power supply controller board has 5 fan headers but only four fans. I believe these headers are 12v? Can I tap off the fan header and and run a wire into a molex connector and use that to power the SAS expander? Thanks gents!
I'm running an Intel RES2CV240 expander in my C6100. What I did was tap power from the harness between the power supplies and the backplane. You can get 5 and 12 volts there. I lined the back of the expander with electrical tape and placed the board on top of that wiring (there is about 3/4 of an inch of space there between the various wiring and the top cover). The stiff SAS cables hold it in place quite well.
 

Madhelp

Member
Feb 7, 2013
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Good to know guys, I'll try and tap power from backplane power cord. I assumed the fan header would be sufficient given the fact that the original Delta fans are rated to pull up to 4.9A. I found documentation that says the last generation Intel RES2SV240 uses a maximum of 14.6W. Thanks again!
 

c6100

Member
Oct 22, 2013
163
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USA
I've spent a lot of time going through the threads and I've seen some data that contradicts itself and others which may not be accurate. I am not trying to be lazy here but I just want to make sure I make the right purchases. Here are some questions, thanks guys – great thread!

1. Will 16 GB ECC RDIMMs RAM work with the Intel L5520 Xeon? (I saw one reply state No and the other Yes)

2. I am wanting to connect 6 drives to one sled's mobo - is my only purchase to make is Monoprice's 0.5m 30AWG Internal Mini SAS 36pin (SFF-8087) Male w/ Latch to SATA 7pin Female (x4) Forward Breakout Cable? Instead of the DELL CABLE SATA ASSEMBLY 6J3R2?
DELL CABLE SATA ASSEMBLY FOR DELL C6100 6J3R2

3. If I perform the above, if the sled providing the power to 3 drives going to the other sled's mobo is not functioning then do the drives no longer have power?

4. If I perform question 2 – Has anyone been able to activate the drive lights?

5. What is the difference between why one would want the screwed vs the screw less drive trays?
 

Clownius

Member
Aug 5, 2013
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1. i cant answer sorry

2. Yes you can do it that way. I just used a 4x cable and one of the standard 3x cables but only using 2 sata bits

3. Power is provided for all drives from the single backplane. It makes no idfference what if any Nodes you have for power to the drives

4. A jumper can be used to do this. i cant remember the name offhand

5. I havent seen a screw less drive tray for these.
 

PigLover

Moderator
Jan 26, 2011
3,184
1,545
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#1. No, you cannot use 16GB dimms with any L55xx or X55xx CPU. You must be using L56xx or X56xx CPUs in order to use 16GB dimms. With the L5520 you are limited to using 8GB or smaller dimms.
 

darkconz

Member
Jun 6, 2013
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I have joined the club and ordered myself one C6100. Hopefully it'll ship soon. There is a tons of great information in this thread and it took me 2 days to digest it all!.

Thank you all for the information and I hope I can contribute when I receive my server.
 

Madhelp

Member
Feb 7, 2013
39
25
18
Try jumper D from memory. I would test but im in AU and dealing with bushfires. Both my C6100's are in the car currently
I guess reading the manual always helps. It shows the following jumper settings on the backplane:

A hard drive TypeSelect*Disable Enable
B SAS Code Select *Disable Enable
C MFG Test *Disable Enable
D LED Control *Disable Enable

I'll give D a go, thanks!
 
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alan

New Member
Oct 24, 2013
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We are considering buying our first C6100. When I first looked at the box, it looked absolutely perfect for what we want to do.

The front of the box has 12 to 24 drive bays, the back of the box has 4 server nodes. We could potentially buy one of these and eliminate all of the equipment we are currently leasing and have the whole thing pay for itself in a couple of months.

What we would like to do is fill the 11 drive bays with 3TB drives, one with a SSD, and use a RAID controller that supports CacheCade to create one large raid 5 with caching on the SSD.

In doing research, I've discovered some issues
- the RAID card that normally comes with these won't even remotely come close to doing this
- I can't tell if there is a RAID card capable of this that also will fit in one of these nodes
- there is the serious issue that even if I find a card, the drives apparently power down if the node they are supposed to be connected to powers down.
- if all of that can be fixed, how do I get fast access to the raid from the other 3 nodes if there is a raid card plugged into the node that drives the raid.

Is it possible to configure this to work the way we want?
 

PigLover

Moderator
Jan 26, 2011
3,184
1,545
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You can do what you describe with the C6100, but frankly it requires you to do things that affect the operability and maintainability of the platform. For example, in order to cable all 12 drives to a single node in a way that makes it impossible to pull the tray without opening the case to pull out the wires. For a production system in your business this really isn't a good idea at all.

Frankly, your requirements are met much better by the next generation of servers in this family, the C6220. Of course since these are newer it is still rare to find them off-lease at reasonable cost.

The C6200, for example, has a SAS switch that allows any node to see any drive and to dynamically change their assignment. Of you put an HBA into two nodes you could easily create the 'quickly attach disks to another node after a failure' model you require.
 
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dba

Moderator
Feb 20, 2012
1,477
184
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San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA
We are considering buying our first C6100. When I first looked at the box, it looked absolutely perfect for what we want to do.

The front of the box has 12 to 24 drive bays, the back of the box has 4 server nodes. We could potentially buy one of these and eliminate all of the equipment we are currently leasing and have the whole thing pay for itself in a couple of months.

What we would like to do is fill the 11 drive bays with 3TB drives, one with a SSD, and use a RAID controller that supports CacheCade to create one large raid 5 with caching on the SSD.

In doing research, I've discovered some issues
- the RAID card that normally comes with these won't even remotely come close to doing this
- I can't tell if there is a RAID card capable of this that also will fit in one of these nodes
- there is the serious issue that even if I find a card, the drives apparently power down if the node they are supposed to be connected to powers down.
- if all of that can be fixed, how do I get fast access to the raid from the other 3 nodes if there is a raid card plugged into the node that drives the raid.

Is it possible to configure this to work the way we want?
There isn't an effective way to route all 12 or 24 c6100 drives to one node. Up to six drives per node is pretty easy (by using the 24-bay chassis or modifying the wiring) but above that is much more difficult. If you are willing to do what I'd call some real duct-tape-and-bailing-wire type modifications, you could use the six motherboard ports plus a SAS mezzanine card or a PCIe card to get 12 drives per node, but I would consider it to be more of a hack than a real solution.

If you need more drives per node, an external disk chassis is the easiest and most common approach. Barring that, you might want to consider alternative servers like the c6145 or the c6220, both of which use expanders - a programmable expander in the case of the c6220.
 
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c6100

Member
Oct 22, 2013
163
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USA
#1. No, you cannot use 16GB dimms with any L55xx or X55xx CPU. You must be using L56xx or X56xx CPUs in order to use 16GB dimms. With the L5520 you are limited to using 8GB or smaller dimms.
The reason I re-asked the question is because of the following posts on page 32. PigLover - are you saying this because you tried or are the posts below not accurate?

I have 12x 16GB of dual rank memory in a set of C6100's and XS23-TY3's, and they all run at 1333 mhz. The memory isn't hard to find at all, it just costs more.
FWIW I was able to use 8x16GB with a single L5520 CPU. I haven't yet tried two 5520's but I'll report the results here if/when I do. This was an XS23-TY3.