[rescue] A somewhat modern rescue -- some PCI questions

[Doug McIntyre]

On Sun, Oct 27, 2019 at 12:27:42PM -0400, Stephen Conley wrote:
> I have one last question, though.  There's a mysterious slot labeled
> "PCIE_X4_1" on the motherboard ... *but* it is an x8 slot.  The user manual
> says this is reserved for the RAC card (which i do not have).  The other x8
> slots are labeled PCIE_X8_* on the motherboard.
> 
> Is this slot usable at all?  Is it a x4 slot with x8 form factor so that
> Dell wouldn't need to make a x4 version of their RAC card?  Anyone know?  I
> can't find an answer on google but I'm probably asking in a dumb way.  I
> just get links the the manual when I try to find the answer :D

I don't have the DRAC card either. It wouldn't surprise me if the slot
is keyed differently to make sure the slot was left unused so the DRAC
card can use the ribbon cable to plugin to the motherboard port. I'd go by
the x4 lane designation, rather than the form factor (x8). Most often
on Dells of this era, I see the DRAC slot offset some, so a
normal card can't physically fit without taking off the slot cover or
something. Not sure if they did it here (guess I'm not taking down my
file server to look).

I would imagine other than overcoming either of those if done, that it
would be a usable PCIe slot. 

> If I wind up having to choose, I'd probably pick video over RAID because
> I've been bit by old hardware raid controllers in the past ... when they
> fail, they tend to fail spectacularly :)  It has on-motherboard SATA ports
> and software raid is pretty good these days.

Yes, ZFS with JBOD all the way. :-)