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

[Stephen Conley]

Okay, thanks for sharing -- I'll avoid the DRAC port.  Mine looks like it
is lined up with the other card slots.

Chances are I'm going to do exactly what you say and just ZFS it :)

On Sun, Oct 27, 2019 at 3:23 PM Doug McIntyre <merlyn at geeks.org> wrote:

> 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. :-)
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