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Installing Windows Server 2008 R2 on a PowerEdge SC1425 January 17, 2010

In my effort to build a pseudo-production environment at home to learn Windows Server Administration and work towards some certifications, I found myself in need of nice, 1U server to act as Domain Controller for this planned network. Well, I came across a Dell SC1425 on eBay for under $300 (including rails and S/H) and I jumped. I couldn’t be happier.

The machine is well-equiped, it has dual 3.4 Xeon CPUs (each with 2 Meg cache), 8 Gigs of RAM (installed as 4x 2 Gig DIMMs, with two open DIMM slots for future expansion), dual Gigabit NICs and my machine had an optional SCSI controller and dual 73 Gig Ultra320 SCSI drives. A redundant power supply would have been nice (and required were this not “pseudo-production” but instead “real production”), and an internal Optical drive also would have been nice to have, but no complaints on either.

So I set about doing as I always do with older hardware, I updated the BIOS immediately (A03 is the latest), and after reforming a test install of Windows Server 2008 to confirm the hardware was good, I set about upgrading the machine. Without an internal DVD drive I was forced to install by using a hard-wired IDE DVD-ROM drive (USB DVD was giving me headaches) – this meant installing with the server cover removed. To protect the CPUs I laid the cover across the chassis to help force the cool air from the fans across the CPU heatsinks. To get power I used a power-splitter and tapped off one of the HD power leads.

First up, I removed the SCSI infrastructure (controller, cable (w/terminator) and two 73 Gig HDs and replaced the drives with two Segate 500 Gig SATA HDs and a Syba SATA “RAID” controller based on the Sil3124 controller. Turns out there are no signed, x64 bit drivers for this controller under Windows Server 2008, so out it came and I fell back to the on-board CERC SATA controller. But, as it turns out, that controller is not supported under Windows Server 2008, so I set it to non-RAID in the BIOS and secured proper cabling to run from the motherboard to the drives. I also had to use two Molex HD to SATA power adapters to power the drives.

The SATA cables need nott be special, but after using “bog-standard” straight connector cables for both drives I found that the connector pressed on the inside fo the chassis cover. While it might never pose a problem, I thought it best to get some right-angle cables to “do it right.” I had a suitable 12″ SATA cable pulled from a surplused Dell Desktop with one right-angle connector, that worked for drive zero, but drive one was on the other side of the chassis. A quick measure with a cloth tape measure led me to believe an 18″ cable should work, but since I live quite a distance from my nearest Microcenter store, I opted to get not only an 18″ cable but also a 36″ cable (I couldn’t find a 24″ cable with one right-angle connector. I didn’t need the longer cable – the 18″ cable fit perfectly.

With the hardware taken care of, I installed the OS without incident straight from the MS DVD. Well, there was one incident – the video driver couldn’t take the onboard graphics resolution above 800×600, clearly unacceptable. After some quick googling I found that this server isn’t supported under Windows Server 2008, so Dell has no drivers. I persisted, and turned up a suitable driver over at IBM/Lenovo – seems they released a few servers that included the ATI Radeon 7000m graphics card AND support Windows Server 2008 on them. I downloaded the driver, ran the executable, then rebooted the server and saw a glorious 1280×1024 login screen.

So that’s it, the server is built, and it is about to go up in the rack, just as soon as I position the rack in it’s new home, add power (off a UPS), networking, and KVM support – I have all the bits, I just need time to put it all together.

Are you putting together a “faux Datacenter” in your home, I’d love to hear what you’re up to, and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.