So, I finally bought this big box from eBay and cost me AUD 1075. I got a Windows server 2003 R2 standard edition along with this big and heavy box. One fine Saturday morning I started installing the OS and failed a couple of times with the error message: "Cannot find the hard drive to install OS on". After Googling for some time, I found that there are some pre-requisite drivers missing that will create logical drives. Got this blog and tried for several hours with this and my USB stick: http://thebackroomtech.com/2008/03/13/a-dell-poweredge-server-windows-2003-x64-and-the-battle-over-sas-raid-drivers/.
Then I found a comment on the blog that said: "Eventually, I had to get a server management CD to get the installation successfully done!". Immediately, got some CDs went to the Dell site and burned it with the software, ran it and it did everything quite smoothly - Prepared for installation step by step and with the thorough GUI, then prompted for the OS CDs.
However, the 2003 R2 Standard Edition would not recognize the memory greater than 4 GB. I tried fiddling with the boot.ini including /PAE in there but no help. Finally wiped out everything and installed the Ubuntu 64 bit edition utilizing the complete hardware resources to the max!
Then I found a comment on the blog that said: "Eventually, I had to get a server management CD to get the installation successfully done!". Immediately, got some CDs went to the Dell site and burned it with the software, ran it and it did everything quite smoothly - Prepared for installation step by step and with the thorough GUI, then prompted for the OS CDs.
However, the 2003 R2 Standard Edition would not recognize the memory greater than 4 GB. I tried fiddling with the boot.ini including /PAE in there but no help. Finally wiped out everything and installed the Ubuntu 64 bit edition utilizing the complete hardware resources to the max!
