20 thoughts on - R730xd & SD Card Identfication

• Is the card formatted? Can you format it on that computer?

• Everyone,

  We have migrated a platform to a CentOS 8 host using kvm guest machines

  Recently I tried to copy one of the guests to the external SD card on the back of the Dell R730xd, but I have not been able to get the CentOS
  8 host to recognize the SD card.

  I can use DRAC interface of the R730xd to see that the SD card is being recognized and the status of the external SD slot is turned from inactive to active when the card is inserted.

  I have used lsblk, fdisk -l, and ‘dmesg | tail’ none of which demonstrate that the CentOS 8 host is recognizing the SD card.

  You help would be appreciated.

  Thanks !!

• Is the card formatted? Can you format it on that computer?
  —————————————–

• Am 07.03.21 um 20:58 schrieb Gregory P. Ennis:

  Any logs (journalctl -f) while inserting?

  Such slots should be handled by the sdhci kernel module …

• Am 07.03.21 um 20:58 schrieb Gregory P. Ennis:

  Any logs (journalctl -f) while inserting?

  Such slots should be handled by the sdhci kernel module …

• Is xfs a valid format for a sdcard? (I really don’t know.)

  I would reformat it as fat32 and see what happens.

• Am 07.03.21 um 20:58 schrieb Gregory P. Ennis:

  Any logs (journalctl -f) while inserting?

  Such slots should be handled by the sdhci kernel module …

• Is xfs a valid format for a sdcard? (I really don’t know.)

  I would reformat it as fat32 and see what happens.

  —————————————————————

• I have a nagging feeling at the back of my mind that that slot is associated with the iDrac system and not the main board.

  In any case doesn’t that need a vFlash card not a standard SD/SDHC
  card? From Wikipedia:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_DRAC

  To take advantage of storage greater than 256 MB on the iDRAC6
  enterprise, Dell requires that a vFlash SD card be procured through
  Dell channels. As of December 2011, Dell vFlash SD cards differ from
  consumer SD cards by being over-provisioned by 100% for increased
  write endurance and performance.[21]

  While there are no other known functional differences between a
  Dell-branded vFlash SD card and a class 2 or greater SDHC card, the
  use of non-Dell media prevents the use of extended capacities and
  functions.

  P.

• I have a nagging feeling at the back of my mind that that slot is associated with the iDrac system and not the main board.

  In any case doesn’t that need a vFlash card not a standard SD/SDHC
  card? From Wikipedia:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_DRAC

  To take advantage of storage greater than 256 MB on the iDRAC6
  enterprise, Dell requires that a vFlash SD card be procured through
  Dell channels. As of December 2011, Dell vFlash SD cards differ from
  consumer SD cards by being over-provisioned by 100% for increased
  write endurance and performance.[21]

  While there are no other known functional differences between a
  Dell-branded vFlash SD card and a class 2 or greater SDHC card, the
  use of non-Dell media prevents the use of extended capacities and
  functions.

  P.

  ——————————————————————

• I don’t know iDrac but I’d guess that you can make the SD device visible to the OS by passing them through as a virtual devices. Maybe you could try this?

  Simon Simon

• You can get an Internal Dual SD Module (IDSDM) addon for those machines
  – they are different to the iDrac based vFlash card. And yes, you can boot a hypervisor from the internal SD card.

  Also, apparently, neither the vFlash slot nor the IDSDM are hot-
  pluggable.

  P.

• I think the SD card on the back of the IDRAC7 systems on the Dell 730xd are similar to this. They are accessible by the IDrac and dell software and are primarily there for emergency install of the hardware from known good media. I believe that vmware has a module which talks to the card so you can install software in vm’s from said known good media.

• I think the SD card on the back of the IDRAC7 systems on the Dell 730xd are similar to this. They are accessible by the IDrac and dell software and are primarily there for emergency install of the hardware from known good media. I believe that vmware has a module which talks to the card so you can install software in vm’s from said known good media.

  ———————————————————————

• Hi Greg,

  If your only problem with CentOS 8 is the support end, why not just switch the system to Oracle Linux 8 or another clone or even Red Hat EL with one of the new licenses, if they fit your needs?

  Moving the whole setup to VMware seems a bit overkill to me as you likely have to learn a completely new system and deal with new problems.

  Simon

• On some of our machines (not Dell R730 series, so caveat emptor), I
  had to use the kmod-isci RPM from ELRepo.org to get EL8 hosts (both CentOS and RHEL) to recognize Intel SATA controllers. The same controller is recognized just fine by EL7 kernels, but the isci driver was removed in RHEL 8:

  https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8/html-single/considerations_in_adopting_rhel_8/index#removed-device-drivers_hardware-enablement

  My suggestion is that you try finding a driver at http://elrepo.org/.

• Hi Greg,

  If your only problem with CentOS 8 is the support end, why not just switch the system to Oracle Linux 8 or another clone or even Red Hat EL with one of the new licenses, if they fit your needs?

  Moving the whole setup to VMware seems a bit overkill to me as you likely have to learn a completely new system and deal with new problems.

  Simon

• * On some of our machines (not Dell R730 series, so caveat emptor), I
  had to use the kmod-isci RPM from ELRepo.org to get EL8 hosts (both CentOS and RHEL) to recognize Intel SATA controllers. The same controller is recognized just fine by EL7 kernels, but the isci driver was removed in RHEL 8:

  https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8/html-single/considerations_in_adopting_rhel_8/index#removed-device-drivers_hardware-enablement

  My suggestion is that you try finding a driver at http://elrepo.org/.

  ——————————————————————

• As was said above, the sd card on the back of the machine is ONLY for use by the iDRAC. If you have iDRAC enterprise, it is not necessary to use it to install vmware esxi or for that matter any OS. All you need to do is mount the iso as a virtual disk using the iDRAC console. I do this all the time to both upgrade/install esxi and install CentOS/Windows/whatever vm’s.

  Just do not try to mount the iso on a machine on a low bandwidth connection. It will take forever. :-(

  If you want to install vmware esxi on an sd card you need a isdm module. Something like:
  https://www.ebay.com/itm/PMR79-Dell-PowerEdge-R630-R730-R730xd-Dual-SD-Flash-Card-Reader-Module/233572427053?epid39290890&hash=item366200652d:g:YNQAAOSwBYhc3HPQ
  Keep in mind that Dell recommends that you do not install esxi newer than
  6.7 on an sd card. They stopped offering the isdm modules on 14th gen servers with esxi 7.0 installed. They claim they see too many failures of the sd cards with 7.0.

  HTH,

• As was said above, the sd card on the back of the machine is ONLY for use by the iDRAC. If you have iDRAC enterprise, it is not necessary to use it to install vmware esxi or for that matter any OS. All you need to do is mount the iso as a virtual disk using the iDRAC console. I do this all the time to both upgrade/install esxi and install CentOS/Windows/whatever vm’s.

  Just do not try to mount the iso on a machine on a low bandwidth connection. It will take forever. :-(

  If you want to install vmware esxi on an sd card you need a isdm module. Something like:
  https://www.ebay.com/itm/PMR79-Dell-PowerEdge-R630-R730-R730xd-Dual-SD-Flash-Card-Reader-Module/233572427053?epid39290890&hash=item366200652d:g:YNQAAOSwBYhc3HPQ
  Keep in mind that Dell recommends that you do not install esxi newer than
  6.7 on an sd card. They stopped offering the isdm modules on 14th gen servers with esxi 7.0 installed. They claim they see too many failures of the sd cards with 7.0.

  HTH,
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