The Dell PowerEdge C6220 Thread

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falanger

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Jan 30, 2018
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No one has the experience of running Tesla on c6220-c8220? I have a 0083n0 card with c6220 firmware. When you connect a cable to the GPGPU and install it or a conventional video card or Tesla K20, a post error occurs. Maybe on the riser board you need to close the jumper jumper1? The auxiliary power is connected. And how to set up Tesla's collaborative work with the embedded video asped for Linux? I do not want to turn it off to use ipmi.
 

TheJaw87

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Aug 3, 2017
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Hey everyone, I have a C6220 v2 that I'm working on... I screwed it up by not patching the FCB first. Now when I try to power on any of the nodes, all of the indicator lights light up blue. None of the nodes power on. However, all of the BMCs on the nodes work great.

Any one have any ideas on what I can do to fix my screwup?

I tried to pull one of the nodes out and power it on via the ATX connector using a 24/8 to 18 pin connector that fits the motherboard. I checked all of the voltages on the pins and it seems to match up with what the MB is expecting. But it still won't power on. I tried all 4 of the nodes, no dice.

Do I need to buy a new FCB? Is there some magical combination of pins on the board I can bridge to run it in some kind of safe mode that would let me recover the FCB?
 

jfoor

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Feb 4, 2017
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Hmm, interesting problem. Haven't encountered this myself so I won't be much help to you. I'm assuming you've tried to reset the CMOS? You may have tried this since you mentioned the power but...have you tried pulling both of the main AC power cables from the chassis and letting it sit for a few minutes? I know after I flashed FCB/BMC in order for it to "refresh" and have the FCB clear/load the new firmware I had to pull the power and let it sit for a minute or two. I don't know if that applies here but it would be worth a shot.
 

TheJaw87

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Aug 3, 2017
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Hmm, interesting problem. Haven't encountered this myself so I won't be much help to you. I'm assuming you've tried to reset the CMOS? You may have tried this since you mentioned the power but...have you tried pulling both of the main AC power cables from the chassis and letting it sit for a few minutes? I know after I flashed FCB/BMC in order for it to "refresh" and have the FCB clear/load the new firmware I had to pull the power and let it sit for a minute or two. I don't know if that applies here but it would be worth a shot.
That's a good suggestion, but I think the issue is a node tried to boot as I was applying the FCB firmware and it aborted the update (which the FCB does not like, per dell).

I have cleared the CMOS on 2 nodes, but now they try to immediately power on when they sense power, vs the random autopower I had set them to. So, when I apply power to the chassis and only one of those CMOS reset nodes are plugged in, it immediately goes to the "All indicator lights are blue" state.

I'm wondering if there's a way I can set the bios to not auto power on... hence my pulling it out of the chassis and trying to make an ATX powersupply work.

I should have included this in my original comment... sorry.
 

falanger

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Jan 30, 2018
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I'm a glade that you had a power failure when you reflashed the BIOS?
In any case, you'd better take one card separately from the chassis and try to run it on a hundred-year from the ATX power supply unit through an adapter, having previously zeroed off the NVRAM.
If you have a card 0083N0 which is defined as C6220 And then there is a network IPMI connector to which you can connect directly with a cable from the notebook with Windows XP and old Java. And try using the firmware BMS voti in the BIOS of the main board or reflash it.
This is of course in case the problem is in the boards, and not in your chassis itself that could be damaged or get damaged during your experiments or there could be some sort of protection means blocking the system.
 
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cmpufxr

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Apr 25, 2015
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There is a setting in the bios to change the power on. Also just re-flash everything and you should be good. I flashed both my c6100 and c6220 straight to the latest firmware via dos without following any order. I did have to flash the BMC on a few nodes multiple time before it finally took. I also had to remove power from the chassis and hold the power button (to drain off the capacitors) on one node before it would work.
 
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TheJaw87

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Aug 3, 2017
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I have an update on this... I think the issue actually was a bad FCB to start with. It blew a capacitor on the FCB last night and there were zero blades slotted into it.

So I'm hoping that when I get the "new" FCB that my problems will go away. I'll know more on Wednesday.

edit: grammar...
 

cmpufxr

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Apr 25, 2015
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I am looking to adding a video card to each of my hosts for vmware. Just wondering if anyone knows which nvidia card will work in the C6220 and fit in the chassis.
 

marcus.fr

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Nov 24, 2018
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As for your first question, c6220 supports sata 3gbs and c6220II supports sata 6gbps. I've seen comments that say one could make sata 6gbps work on a c6220 with direct wiring from the back sas port to the backplane but I've yet to see actual proof it would and I am rather unsure it would work.
Could you please point me to a technical specification that confirms that C6220II has SATA3 support and the drives are actually wired on SATA3 controller from the factory. I can not 100% confirm this from the Dell specs given at the link below.

https://downloads.dell.com/manuals/all-products/esuprt_ser_stor_net/esuprt_cloud_products/poweredge-c6220-2_owner's manual_en-us.pdf

Thank you!
 

marcus.fr

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Nov 24, 2018
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@Finally, regarding info about C6220ii: it contains a couple words about speed 6GB/S (6.0 Gbps). May be that is the reason to talk about the "partial" support of SATA3.
Indeed, due to scarcity of specification data we can only speak about "partial" SATA3 support, but hopefully someone here will provide concrete data.

The speed of SATA3 is exactly what I'm looking for. I'm considering to order either C6220 or C6220II, the upshot is to install 2x SSD drives for better read/write speed. There is a huge speed difference between SSD running on SATA2 and SATA3, as outlined in this benchmark.

I'm considering C6220II only for the SATA3 alleged support. C6220I will be super enough for me in terms of CPU support and such, the only doubt is SATA3 support. I read through this thread but could not get it clear if I can just reconnect the factory installed SATA cables from SATA2 to SATA3 ports located on the 4/5 position on the mobo, and just with that have SATA3 support for the 2x SSD drives installed in the 5/6 front position.
 

jcabedo

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Feb 26, 2019
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We have successfully done than on two chassis with 4*2.5" disk nodes, upgrade the bios if it hasnt been done, try to restore it to default and check the midplane/backplane cabling as it could be pretty "funky" on the 3.5" version.

We just bought two of these 3.5" and they were cabled for 3 nodes so there is only 3 cables from midplane to backplane which are plugged to 4 disks each (one per disk row), the seller sent us a spare of these SAS to SATA+SGPIO cable (the model for the #1 node noted MB1) but the cables length make it impossible to plug them as a 4 nodes chassis with one column of disk per nodes, the only possible combination with these cables is this one :
View attachment 3684

Here is what it looks like cabled for 3 nodes : View attachment 3685 View attachment 3686



To avoid risks of removing the wrong disk, we prefer to stick to 3 nodes per chassis and ordered another one, being able to use 4 disks per nodes instead of 3 is even better in the end.

Hello
I have this configuration and need change to 4 nodes , 3 hdd per node.
Would someone please have a picture of a mid panel wired for 4 nodes, 3 hdd per node.
Thank you
 

Bogdan Daja

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Sep 30, 2016
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Hello
I have this configuration and need change to 4 nodes , 3 hdd per node.
Would someone please have a picture of a mid panel wired for 4 nodes, 3 hdd per node.
Thank you
I do not have picture.. but you will need others SAS cable the 3 nodes config use 4hdd / node
 

phanvlong

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Sep 1, 2016
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I was wondering if anyone tried putting an SSD inside the sled, attached to one of the SATA ports on the board, and powered by the USB2.0 port on the board? I would like to try fitting one in to give me 1 extra drive per storage pool, but was wondering about heat. I could put it on plastic stilts or something to keep it off the board if needed.
Yes, I put an SSD inside the sled with diyed cable to get the power from the internal usb port, but only 2 of 4 sled work with SSD inside, 2 other -> 1 bricked + 1 hang up when have SSD pluged and run normally without SSD.
Below are the steps that i diyed cable:
diyed.jpg

I'm finding other ways to get power for the inside SSD, I might extract the power from PCIe Slot, I'll update result later
 

a.out

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May 3, 2016
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Another option is to use a low profile PCIe adapter card for M.2 drives that holds one or two SATA drives in addition to an NVMe drive.
Not sure about NVMe support, but it would be nice to have an Optane as SLOG for ZFS as well as mirrored SSDs for booting/L2ARC when running Proxmox on the nodes.
Tried btw to run a pair of E5-2620v2 tonight in one node since bios 2.5.6 includes v2 microcode updates according to release notes, but the node failed to post (bummer). Has anyone tried the C6220II bios to check if it enables v2 cpus?
 

a.out

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May 3, 2016
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Installed C6220II bios 2.9.0 on a gen1 node w/o problem, but still no post with v2.
Only platform I have stumbled upon that does not support v2o_O
(Upgrade of bios only took a couple of seconds which is odd, but correct version is shown on boot.)
 

revyve

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Jun 11, 2016
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I know this is an old thread... but wondering if anyone out there knows what raid cards work with the c6220ii. I had a HP240 12gb sas card and BIOs won't post with one installed... but if I go back to the LSI 9265 it does. Basically setting up a 4 node all flash vsan cluster for my home lab. Do the LSI 9300's work? Thoughts?
 
Oct 9, 2016
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I know this is an old thread... but wondering if anyone out there knows what raid cards work with the c6220ii. I had a HP240 12gb sas card and BIOs won't post with one installed... but if I go back to the LSI 9265 it does. Basically setting up a 4 node all flash vsan cluster for my home lab. Do the LSI 9300's work? Thoughts?
I think the backplane is 6G max, so any raid card beyond that value will be useless. Maybe some other member will say the opposite.

However a 4 note VSAN would consume too much power as those machine are power hungry.