The Dell PowerEdge C6220 Thread

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

sevlor

New Member
Aug 2, 2019
5
0
1
Did the either the C6220 or C6220 II come with onboard 10Gbe, because the nodes that I have, ESXi shows 4x 10Gbe NICs, (2 onboard, and 2 from the Mezz), I have confirmed this by booting up with Kali linux, and running ethtool, and hooking two nodes together (Don't have a 10GBE copper switch), and running iperf.

Kali shows that the onboard NICs are Intel x540-AT2

I can't seem to find any good information on what I actually have here.

Edit:

I ended up just searching everything I could find, and noticed that I had a newer bios listed than what is listed on Dell's site for either the 6220 or the II, so I searched looking for bios version 3.5.3 in relation to thse things, and it turns out that the nodes that I have in my system are C8220 nodes and look identical to this: CNW04 Dell Motherboards Server

Two heat sinks on the I/O end, one is for the X540-AT2 NICs JLx540at2 is the exact chip, and the other I would assume is the chipset.


I'm still a bit confused on this whole chassis as it seems to have the official dell sticker on the top saying DCS 6220 II, but as I said in my previous comment, the Service Tag comes back as 6220 non-II, and all 4 service tags for the nodes come back as 6220 non-II.

So, based on that information as from my research I can't find any 6220 systems that came with onboard 10GBE with the x540 chipset, and that only being availble as on option on the 8220 I have pulled the spec sheet for the 8220 https://i.dell.com/sites/csdocument...s_Documents/en/PowerEdge_C8220_Spec_Sheet.pdf Would you all concur that I may be able to run the v2 CPUS? I have one on it's way to test.
 
Last edited:

IntahnetMonster

New Member
Jul 9, 2020
3
0
1
Does anyone know if the chassis for the original C6220 nodes, and the C6220-II is the same? or does it have some differences?
 

sevlor

New Member
Aug 2, 2019
5
0
1
Did the either the C6220 or C6220 II come with onboard 10Gbe, because the nodes that I have, ESXi shows 4x 10Gbe NICs, (2 onboard, and 2 from the Mezz), I have confirmed this by booting up with Kali linux, and running ethtool, and hooking two nodes together (Don't have a 10GBE copper switch), and running iperf.

Kali shows that the onboard NICs are Intel x540-AT2

I can't seem to find any good information on what I actually have here.

Edit:

I ended up just searching everything I could find, and noticed that I had a newer bios listed than what is listed on Dell's site for either the 6220 or the II, so I searched looking for bios version 3.5.3 in relation to thse things, and it turns out that the nodes that I have in my system are C8220 nodes and look identical to this: CNW04 Dell Motherboards Server

Two heat sinks on the I/O end, one is for the X540-AT2 NICs JLx540at2 is the exact chip, and the other I would assume is the chipset.


I'm still a bit confused on this whole chassis as it seems to have the official dell sticker on the top saying DCS 6220 II, but as I said in my previous comment, the Service Tag comes back as 6220 non-II, and all 4 service tags for the nodes come back as 6220 non-II.

So, based on that information as from my research I can't find any 6220 systems that came with onboard 10GBE with the x540 chipset, and that only being availble as on option on the 8220 I have pulled the spec sheet for the 8220 https://i.dell.com/sites/csdocument...s_Documents/en/PowerEdge_C8220_Spec_Sheet.pdf Would you all concur that I may be able to run the v2 CPUS? I have one on it's way to test.
So I finally got an E5-2630v2 CPU in and put it in one of the 4 nodes, and It booted up no problems with that CPU.

I also spoke with the person I bought this from, and he said that he got it off ebay, and the original posting said these were old systems from DropBox.

I still find it strange that all the Service tags says 6220 (Non II) but I am unable to pull the orignal specs on Dells site for the service tags, the sticker on the chassis says C6220 II, the bios slash screen and bios all says for each node 6220 II but all the nodes had e5-2620 SandyBridge CPUs, but have onboard 10GBe copper NICs, and a bios version of 3.5.3 and the only thing I can find with that configuration is an 8220 node motherboard which has compatibility with both Sandy and Ivy bridge CPUS. I'm guessing the nodes were either flashed to show 6220 II, or do they pick that up from the chassis backplane?

I'm so confused on this chassis but happy that I got exactly what I was looking for, for $500 fully populated, just gotta upgrade all the CPUs now to Ivy Bridge.
 

zimmy6996

New Member
Jul 12, 2023
2
0
1
Sorry for the cross post, but I found this thread and figured it might be helpful to post here since it's specific to the C6220



Hey all, I was trying to flash my 4 node chassis with BIOS firmware to update from 2.5.3 to 2.5.7. One of my nodes ran the update, and hung. It appears like it did the full flash, the fans spun up quicker, but it just hung there on the screen flashing. I let it sit for 15 minutes, and finally powered it off. Now when I power the node on, I do get a POST for RAM Config, saying it's okay, the screen goes blank, and then comes back up to the RAM check, okay. It never actually gets to the post.

I have tried clearing NVRAM, and that hasn't helped. It still hangs the same way.

There is clearly a BIOSRECOVERY jumped on the board, which is separate from NVRAM clear which kills the BIOS password. I've been searching google to see if there is anything I can find, but I have not been able to find anything so far ...

I have tried adding a jumper to the BIOSRECOVERY jumper point, but it makes no difference. I assume there is a procedure that needs to be followed to get this to work?

Any help would be greatly apprecaited!
 

originalworm

New Member
Jan 22, 2024
4
0
1
Hello all,

I was offered a 2 node C6220 chassis which I'm planning to use for my homelab. I've installed ubuntu on both nodes, everything seems to work however, the fan are stuck at 16k rpm and it's a pretty noisy beast... I've been unable to find any way to control the fan speed in any way. I've tried various impi command I've found around the net, but they are all rejected (impi works fine for everything else).

Reading this thread, I understand that once it's booted it should have quiet down by itself, but here it does not, and the fan run full speed all the time.

Looking into the unit, I've found that the 2 nodes are different version, one is a C6220 v1 node, and the other is C6220 v2 node. I'm wondering if this could cause the full speed fan behaviour...

The first node reports the following:
PowerEdge C6220
BIOS Version: 1.2.1
MRC Version: 1.0.018
ME Version: 2.1.5.95
BMC version: 2.53
VBIOS: 0.96.00
Fan Control Board FW: 01.18

The second node:
PowerEdge C6220 II
BIOS Version: 2.2.3
MRC Version: 2.0.0002
ME Version: 2.1.7.231
BMC Version: 2.53
VBIOS: 0.96.00
Fan Control Board FW: 01.18

I've tried various BIOS settings (Power Management options). The only thing I haven't tried yet is flashing the firmwares of the various components since reading the changelog did not reveal any related changes. I didn't want to risk badly flashing it if it's not going to solve my issue.

Do you think it's worse trying to update them ?

Any other idea on how to quiet them down ?
 

originalworm

New Member
Jan 22, 2024
4
0
1
I got my hand on a v2 node, so I was able to try with 2 PowerEdge C6220 II but the result has been the same: the fans run at full speed all the time...

I really hope there is a solution. I might try updating all the firmware version in desperation...
 

originalworm

New Member
Jan 22, 2024
4
0
1
I still have not fixed the fan running at full speed issue...

I've updated the bios, bmc and FCB with the latest available versions but the result is the same: when starting the chassis from a cold start, during the first post, the server is quiet, and as soon as it display the MegaRaid controller info, the fan starts going full speed and never back down (even after rebooting, subsequent posting are noisy unlike the first).

The firmware versions are now :

BIOS version : 2.10.0
BMC version : 2.62
FCB version : 1.25

If that can help somebody, the easiest and safest way I've found to run the firmware update was to create a FreeDOS bootdisk and use the DOS command provided by dell to update the various firmware. (I didnt trust that their linux code from 2015 would run without issue on a modern ubuntu. I least with DOS, you know it's never going to change).

The update went throught without a hitch but it did not help in any way.

IPMI command to control fan speed still won't work either:

Code:
$sudo /opt/dell/pec/bmc force_fan_speed 50
sequence num :  3
date_time    :  2024-00-24__20:46:53
task name    :
command sent :  ipmitool   raw 0x30 0x19 0x20 0x32  2>&1
response ec  :  256
response data:  Unable to send RAW command (channel=0x0 netfn=0x30 lun=0x0 cmd=0x19 rsp=0x81): Unknown (0x81)

summary data :256,,3,2024-00-24__20:46:53

Unable to send RAW command (channel=0x0 netfn=0x30 lun=0x0 cmd=0x19 rsp=0x81): Unknown (0x81)
My only idea is that the chassis is likely a v1 and maybe it's impossible to get it to work correctly with 2 x v2 nodes.

I should be able to get my hand on a second v1 node to try with 2x v1 nodes.
 

originalworm

New Member
Jan 22, 2024
4
0
1
OK, responding to myself in case it helps somebody help.

I got access to more hardware to test and I was able to solve it all.

It's pretty simple in the end: you need v1 nodes in v1 chassis and v2 nodes in v2 chassis.

Any v2 nodes in a v1 chassis will result in the fan running full speed all the time.

The only case I didn't test is a v1 nodes in a v2 chassis.

The difficulty is that it's not easy to tell components appart. If that helps anybody, the v1 node I have has a REV A00 on the serial sticker on the side, and the v2 node has REV A05. For the nodes, the v2 nodes have the lithium battery on the side, whereas the v1 nodes have in right in the middle.

I'm keeping the v2 chassis with the v2 nodes, and the fan are now running at a cool 5000 rpm instead of 16K, much better. It's very quiet now and the chassis use 100W less power.