Dell PowerEdge R910 Systems Information Update

Notes, Cautions, and Warnings

NOTE: A NOTE indicates important information that helps you make better use of your computer.

△ CAUTION: A CAUTION indicates potential damage to hardware or loss of data if instructions are not followed.

WARNING: A WARNING indicates a potential for property damage, personal injury, or death.

Power Supply Removal Updates

The I/O riser with 10G network port requires a minimum of two power supplies to provide standby power to the system. If you remove AC power cables from the system while DC power is on, the system may momentarily operate below the minimum power supply requirement. The BMC SEL may record VR2/IO riser power not good errors and/or PCIe fatal errors when the system AC power input falls below the minimum requirement.

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TE: These errors do not affect the system functionality.

To prevent these errors, ensure the following:

• The system operates with a minimum of two power supply units.

• Turn off the system before removing or connecting AC power cables to the system.

System Limitations With an Optional 10 GbE I/O Riser

The 10 GbE I/O riser provides two 10 Gb SFP+ ports using a Broadcom 57711 controller in addition to two 1 GbE ports. The following are the limitations with the 10 GbE I/O riser:

• To ensure system power redundancy, the 10 GbE I/O riser requires all four power supplies to be connected to the AC power source. The system power becomes non-redundant if one of the power supplies is removed.

△ CAUTION: A power supply failure or removal of another power supply after the system power becomes non-redundant can lead to a system failure and result in loss of data.

• Wake On LAN (WOL) is not supported on the 10 Gb SFP+ ports due to Broadcom 57711 design limitations. However, WOL is supported on the two 1 GbE ports available on the riser.

System Memory Update

The system supports 32 GB quad-rank RDIMMs for a total of up to 2 TB. Table 1 shows the memory configurations available with 32 GB RDIMMs in a four-processor system.

Table 1. Memory Configuration With 32 GB RDIMMs per Processor

Microsoft Updates

The following issues are documented on the Microsoft Help and Support website at support.microsoft.com:

• Systems running Microsoft Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008 cannot be set to hibernation if they have more than 4 GB of memory installed. For more information about enabling hibernation on systems with more than 4 GB of memory, see the knowledge base article KB888575 at microsoft.com.

• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 cannot be installed or run on systems with 1 TB of system memory. This issue may occur either in Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) or in legacy BIOS modes. For more information, see the knowledge base article KB980598 at microsoft.com.

• Systems running Microsoft Windows Server 2008 do not support iSCSI boot when they have an SD card installed in the internal SD module. In addition, iSCSI boot does not work when an external USB storage device is plugged into the system. For more information, see the knowledge base article KB968410 at microsoft.com.

Flash Memory

The VFlash media provided by Dell is not partitioned to support the iDRAC6 Enterprise virtual flash feature. When you use the virtual flash feature for the first time, you are prompted to format the media using the iDRAC GUI.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 Address Limitation With 1 TB (When Memory RAS Mode is Not Used)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 has an address limitation with 1 TB of system memory. To install Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4, use the mem=1024G boot time switch. The system does not boot to the operating system unless a boot time switch mem=1024G is used. For more information, see the knowledge base article at kbase.redhat.com/faq/docs/DOC-25412.

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 (x64) Edition With SP2 Limitation With 1 TB System Memory (When Memory RAS Mode is Not Used)

The system does not boot to the operating system with 1 TB of system memory. To resolve this issue, set the memory RAS mode to sparing or mirror. After installing the operating system, add a boot time switch mem=1046528 or /burnmemory=2048 in the boot.ini file before disabling the RAS mode for subsequent boots.

MAC Address Labels

For security reasons, the embedded NIC and iDRAC6 Enterprise MAC address labels provided with your system cannot be affixed after they have been removed.

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NOTE: The labels are located on the system identification panel on the front of the system.

System Limitations With an Optional PCIe Riser

The PCIe riser expands the number of PCIe expansion slots available in the system to 10. Due to the limitation of 64 KB I/O address space on the Intel IA32 architecture and the