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Dell C6320p server

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Wil Mayers edited this page Mar 12, 2017 · 1 revision

Dell PowerEdge C6320P (bootable Xeon-Phi)

Hardware Overview

  • One 2U C6000 chassis can support 2 x 2U high nodes or 4 x 1U high nodes
  • Ships with two 1200 or 1400W PSUs (single PSU is not supported)
  • Minimum of 1 node required; can ship with blanks for other node slots
  • Nodes are single-socket Xeon Phi 7000-series (max 240W)
  • Chassis supports up to 12 x 3.5" disks or up to 24 x 2.5" disks (or SSDs)
  • 6 DIMM slots; requires 1 DIMM to boot; max of 384TB RAM (6 x 64GB); PCB printing matches slot enumeration
  • 1 x PCIex8 mez card and 1 x PCIex16 low-profile slot
  • Nodes have 1 x RJ45 1Gb port only plus 1 x iDRAC8 port
  • Can support Mellanox EDR HCA (other options available in future)

Profile 'Cluster Slave'

BIOS configuration

  1. If you want to use hardware RAID0/1 on your C6320P to boot from, set that up first.
  • Press F2 during boot to enter BIOS menu
  • Choose 'Device Settings' from the main BIOS menu
  • Choose the RAID card to configure (usually the only one listed)
  • Choose the RAID card from the next menu (usually LSI SAS2 MPT or PERC7)
  • Choose 'Controller Management'
  • Choose 'Create configuration'
  • Select your RAID level (usually RAID1 for system disks)
  • Choose 'Select Physical disks' and choose the drives to include
  • Select 'Apply changes' and confirm when prompted
  • Press ESC to exit to the main menu, saving settings when prompted
  • Continue with BIOS settings as below
  1. Power on and press F2 to enter BIOS, note the firmware revisions during boot
  2. Select 'System BIOS' from main menu
  3. Select system defaults
Press TAB to move to FINISH button
LEFT arrow key to move to default and press ENTER to select
Select finish to return to main BIOS menu
  1. From the main menu, select 'System BIOS' again.
  2. Make the following changes to the default settings:
Boot settings -> Boot BIOS settings -> BIOS Boot sequence -> Choose NIC to PXE boot from as device 1
Boot settings -> Boot BIOS settings -> BIOS Boot sequence -> Choose boot HDD as device 2

Make the following settings:

Serial communication -> serial communication = ON via COM2
Serial communication -> serial port address = device1=COM1, device2=COM2

System Performance -> Select the "Performance" profile

System Security -> Set AC power recovery to "OFF"

Press TAB to highlight the FINISH button and press return; save and exit to main menu

  1. From the main BIOS menu, select 'iDRAC settings'. Make the following change:
Network -> IPMI settings -> enable IPMI-over-LAN = enabled

Select BACK to return to the main iDRAC settings page, and select FINISH to exit, saving the changed settings.

  1. From the menu BIOS menu, write down the Dell service tag printed at the bottom of the screen.
  2. Select the FINISH button from the main menu, exit and reboot.

Hardware support

  • Call Dell on 01344-860456 with the service tag for the machine.
  • Each C6320P in a chassis has its own service tag, and the chassis has a separate tag
  • PSU faults can be opened against the chassis tag or a node tag
  • Use this to convert tags to express service codes
  • Service tags are located on the rear pull handle for C6220s, and on the left hand side of the chassis for C6000

Fault finding may require a DSET report to be generated. Use the latest available DSET revision, and use "RHEL6" or "RHEL7" as the OS type. DSET will not install or run properly if the LSI MegaCLI monitor is installed, so use RPM to remove this first and YUM to install it again afterwards if necessary.

Known issues

  • Firmware upgrade tools may randomly fail depending on versions of firmware you're upgrading from
  • Software BIOS setting tools produce inconsistent results; nodes can lose settings when disconnected from AC
  • Disk drive status LEDs do nothing (and sometimes light up by themselves) if no SAS RAID controller is installed
  • Differing advice on if individual nodes can be serviced without powering down entire chassis
  • Ambient temp sensor is located under front right rack ear; can lead to false overheat warning in some racks
  • Chassis is deep (>900mm) and will not fit in shallow racks with Infiniband cabling
  • Xeon-Phi will boot most modern X86-64 Linux distributions in either legacy or UEFI mode
  • Single-threaded jobs (including OS install, and initial POST) are noticeably slower than Xeon processors; allow extra time for initial OS install and build

Copyright (c) 2008-2018 Alces Software Ltd

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