If you are updating the firmware on a Dell Server you and see “The Operation Failed Due To An Invalid Image File”, you likely have Dell Open Manage Server Administrator (OMSA) open and looking at one of the disks you are trying to update. The solution is to close Dell Read more…
Creating a network adapter team is generally an easy way to double triple or quadruple your throughput but there are a number of annoying roadblocks to get around with Broadcom NIC’s Broadcom NIC Teaming Gotchas: Install the latest Broadcom firmware and drivers Unplug your network cables while creating the team Read more…
If you want to simply upgrade your existing cluster from Server 2012 R2 to Server 2016, you just need to buy Server 2016 licenses and perform a “Server 2016 Rolling Upgrade”. What this does is to take one of your cluster nodes offline, then upgrade it to 2016, then bring Read more…
As we explained in our short piece on USB Type C / Thunderbolt speeds, the type of USB connector does NOT define the speed in use. USB (Universal Serial Bus) is very versatile and can operate at speeds from 480 Mb/s all the way to 40Gb/s. The purpose of this Read more…
If you have installed the Dell HIT Kit for EqualLogic product but cannot get the EqualLogic Host Connection Management Service to start, you likely need to install the Windows Server MPIO feature. You may also see EHCM Service Is Not Running in the Dell EqualLogic MPIO tab of the iSCSI Initiator. Read more…
If you have purchased an OEM (from the hardware vendor, like Dell, HP, Lenovo…) copy of Windows Server 2016 it will be version 1609 build 10.0.14393. You likely know that the most recent version of Windows Server 2016 is version 1709 (i.e. September 2017) and want to upgrade prior to Read more…
If you have a Dell EqualLogic disk storage array and you want to connect it to Server 2016, you will want the Host Integration Tools (HIT Kit). The problem is there HIT Kit version 4.x only supports Server 2012R2 and older. Fortunately, Dell has just made HIT Kit version 5 Read more…
Dell OpenManage Enterprise: OM Enterprise is the replacement for OpenManage Essentials. The underlying difference is that OM Enterprise does not use SQL (and OMEss does). More importantly OMEnt can be downloaded as a VHD which gets rid of all the installation issues. You can download Dell OpenManage Enterprise VHD HERE. Note Read more…
If you have a Dell server you likely want the Dell Management tools but it can be confusing to figure out which product you need. Below is a quick summary of Dell OpenManage products: Dell OpenManage Server Manager: OMSA is the core free product that needs to be installed on Read more…
If you are trying to install Dell OpenManage Server Administrator (OMSA) and you might see this alert / error: The installer has detected that the HTTPS listener is not configured for Windows Remote Management. You can either configure the HTTPS listener before installing Remote Enablement, or install Remote Enablement now Read more…
UPDATED Oct 17 2022 If you have a new Dell server, you will almost certainly want to update the firmware (and drivers, and OS and…) but there is a danger in flashing things in the wrong order. 1: Below is the order in which you should install: iDRAC (optional, but Read more…
The Dell Lifecycle Controller is simply the management tool Dell built to update firmware. When booting a Dell Server you will be able to access the Lifecycle Controller but it may ask you for an IP address. My concern was that it was asking to set a static address on Read more…
If you have a spinning disk and want to make it run much faster you can add in a small Solid State Disk and combine them using Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST). RST will then add the SSD to the spinning disk and copy whatever you frequently use to Read more…
If you see either of the following errors while updating a Dell Server BIOS, there may be a simple fix: BIOS update is not supported using RBU method EXECUTION STATUS: Unified Server Configurator Failure – Detach USC failure – Detaching a partition has failed In my experience there are four solutions Read more…
Today Microsoft announced that it is partnered with major PC hardware manufacturers to produce 5 new Mixed Reality headsets. Mixed Reality? Mixed Reality is the term used to describe the merging of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) . Acer, Lenovo, Dell, Samsung and HP showed off their new Read more…
In the video below we show how to remove the spinning disk from a Dell Latitude 5480 and replace it with a larger one and then enable SSD Caching. To use SSD Caching your PC needs: The connectors to add an SSD and a spinning disk A BIOS that supports SSD Read more…