Dell 6100 and Windows Server 2012

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mixtecinc

New Member
Feb 18, 2013
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Greetings,

I am long time lurker, I am very interested in getting a Dell 6100 series, but would like to know if anyone has tried installing Windows 2012 Server on it? I did not see many drivers on the Dell site for this server.

Cheers

Justin
 

PigLover

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Jan 26, 2011
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With the possible exceptions of the QDR/Infiniband card and the BMC/IPMI driver there are no specialized or unusual drivers required for this platform. You can get all of the drivers you would need directly from Intel.

Mellanox has the drivers for the QDR card. Dell has Win7 x64 / Server-2008 drivers for the BMC and these should be compatible with Server-2012 as the baseline driver model did not change in Win8/Server-2012.
 

Toddh

Member
Jan 30, 2013
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I will be installing 2012 in the next couple days so I will let you know. Win12k has infiniband drivers built into it for this card, ver 4.1, and Piglover is correct Melanox has ver 4.2 drivers available. Actually anything from ConnectX onwards will used the built in Win12k driver. The older cards you need to hack the OF drivers to get them running but they will work.



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Toddh

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Jan 30, 2013
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I got Windows 2012 running a little faster than expected. I had a hd laying next to my SAN but couldn't remember what was on it. I threw it in the C6100 and before I could change the boot order it was booting into Win12k. Turns out it was the boot disk I used to test W12k on the SAN box. Thought I would wait till it blue screened or some threw some other error but it didn't. It detected drivers and booted up into Windows and all looks good. Everything is seen normally except the Infiniband card which needs the firmware upgrade.

Well that was painless. Going to have to keep my magic Win12k boot disk to use on future systems. :)


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Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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I got Windows 2012 running a little faster than expected. I had a hd laying next to my SAN but couldn't remember what was on it. I threw it in the C6100 and before I could change the boot order it was booting into Win12k. Turns out it was the boot disk I used to test W12k on the SAN box. Thought I would wait till it blue screened or some threw some other error but it didn't. It detected drivers and booted up into Windows and all looks good. Everything is seen normally except the Infiniband card which needs the firmware upgrade.

Well that was painless. Going to have to keep my magic Win12k boot disk to use on future systems. :)


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Actually, starting with Windows 7 this got much better. I did have an issue installing Windows Server 2012 that I was able to get past by installing the OS on a different server then swapping the drive to the other chassis.
 

dba

Moderator
Feb 20, 2012
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An update: The Infiniband driver built in to Windows 2012 works on the C6100 after updating the IB card firmware to the latest available version from Dell.

The Mellanox driver installer, however, does not work. Mellanox provides an updated driver for Windows 2012, but if you run it on the C6100 it will complain about old firmware and will not install. I have confirmed that my firmware version is the same as the latest available from Mellanox. It may be the case that the Mellanox installer is looking at the card ID as well as the firmware version and is complaining abou the combination of the two. I do hope that either Mellanox updates their installer or Dell provides one that supports their card.

Greetings,

I am long time lurker, I am very interested in getting a Dell 6100 series, but would like to know if anyone has tried installing Windows 2012 Server on it? I did not see many drivers on the Dell site for this server.

Cheers

Justin
 

cactus

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Jan 25, 2011
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What IB cards are you using? When installing WinOFED onto W2012 it updated my CX2 VPI cards from 2.9.10 to 2.9.12 which is an intermediate firmware. See the table about half way down on this page.
 

Toddh

Member
Jan 30, 2013
122
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I have my C6100 Win12k Server setup with the Mellanox 4.2 driver and the firmware cactus listed above and everything is working fine. Getting 600 - 700mb transfers between this server and a Win12k with a 20Gb Connectx card. Not Blinding fast, but still very cool to watch.

BTW Thanks Cactus for posting the detailed infiniband update instructions. I actually had a firmware downloaded from Dell but used the one you listed and everything is working fine.


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dba

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Feb 20, 2012
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I'm using the Dell mezzanine cards. They are dual port Mellanox ConnectX-2 VPI cards, but the PSID is Dell specific. I also have standard Mellanox cards, which work just fine with Windows 2012.

The Dell cards update to 2.9.10. I see the 2.9.12 firmware in your link to the custom firmware page. It looks like I'll be building a custom firmware for the Dell cards some time very soon.
What IB cards are you using? When installing WinOFED onto W2012 it updated my CX2 VPI cards from 2.9.10 to 2.9.12 which is an intermediate firmware. See the table about half way down on this page.
 
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dba

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Feb 20, 2012
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San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA
...It looks like I'll be building a custom firmware for the Dell cards some time very soon.
Update: The process for building the custom firmware file was quite easy. I created a new version 2.9.12 firmware for the Dell cards using the instructions provided by Mellanox at Mellanox Technologies: Support. Starting with the raw 2.9.1200 firmware files, I edited the file MHQH29C_A1-A2.ini, changing its name to DEL09A0000009.ini and editing it to change the name attribute to DEL09A0000009 and the PSID attribute to DEL09A0000009. After that, mlxburn.exe worked perfectly to create the new firmware file and burn it to the card. Command on Windows was: mlxburn.exe -fw fw-ConnectX2-rel.mlx -dev mt26428_pci_cr0

After the firmware update, the version 4.2 driver install still failed when simply double clicked. Unlike the Win2008R2 version, you must actually follow the instructions to run a /a install first, and then double-click the resulting .msi file to perform the install - odd. If you follow the instructions, the install works.
 

cactus

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Jan 25, 2011
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Good to hear it all worked out. I had problems with PSIDs before and you can force the burn. Rolling your own firmware for the card sounds like a better approach.