Dell Poweredge Motherboard swap

[andiewill]

Hi All

 

I have a Dell Poweredge T420 which i picked up approx 1 year ago very cheap and it is running fine using Unraid OS, the only issue was the memory bank A never worked using all kind of permutation, for instance if i put all the memory in bank B it would be detected with the total amount in the server, but when i split them between A and B only half of the memory would be detected, as stated after many permutations and lock ups  this then prompted me to look out for a replacement motherboard to rectify the issue.

 

i have now got a replacement system board and i was wondering would this be a straight swap out, or would i need to set it all up in post identical as the original one ? or is there a way to save the settings and import them into the new replacement system board at post ?

 

Also at the moment i have Unraid boot mode set to legacy bios on the usb flash drive and server, if i change the boot mode to UEFI on the server and usb flash drive with the saved config, would this work or would i loose all data and would have to start again ?

Any help advice is much appreciated.

[JonathanM]

If you don't have any hardware passed through to VMs, and both the old and new disk controllers are straight HBA IT mode, no RAID or IR, then changing everything over will just work. No changes needed. Unraid "installs" itself fresh and redetects the hardware on every boot anyway, so it's typically seamless to move all your drives and USB boot stick to new equipment.

[andiewill]

Thanks for your reply and thats great news as i dont have any hardware pass through, just waiting for more ram i ordered to arrive, then i'm going to give it a go over the weekend.

 

regarding the UEFI mode should i keep it as bios or switch over to UEFI  ?

[JonathanM]

1 hour ago, andiewill said:

regarding the UEFI mode should i keep it as bios or switch over to UEFI  ?

Doesn't matter much, whichever works best for you.

[andiewill]

Thanks for your reply and i think i'll keep it as it is ...................

 

[dgs2001]

I used a T620 with unraid for several years and it worked well.

 

I did have to keep it in BIOS mode in order to be able to get hardware passed through successfully but I am talking back to when we had to stub vfio devices, and i never worked out why!

 

My suggestion would be to swap hardware without making other changes, once its back up and running then look to make any other changes you want to make.