Set Up iDRAC, RAID, and Proxmox on My PowerEdge R720 Server

I install Proxmox Virtual Environment, set up iDRAC, and RAID on my Dell PowerEdge R720 server in this video. I'm using the server as a type 1 hypervisor. This gives me the flexibility to test and play around with a lot of different technologies. The video is long because I go through the whole thing. Use the menu below to navigate to specific sections.
0:00 Intro
3:38 Server Walk-through
7:22 Initial Boot up and entering the Bios
12:21 Enable Embedded SATA and Internal USB Ports
14:36 Configure iDRAC Settings
19:21 Integrated RAID Controller Configuration
28:28 Install Proxmox on the server
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[@TheSpoonyluvin]

I'm really liking your content. I just wanted to offer a suggestion that you've probably already thought of and fixed on a later video. Take the faceplate off of your old optical drive and attach it to the ssd drive. That will cover the gap perfectly.

[@KoromaTech]

That's a great suggestion! I ended up buying a different one, but for anyone watching this, you should defiantly try to do this. Thanks @TheSpoonyluvin.

[@emlincharly]

Awesome video. Love seeing the process that you went through!

[@KoromaTech]

Thanks. I really think it's all about the process.

[@teknixtek]

I did the same thing swapping the drive with an SSD caddy on a Thinkpad. I wasn't paying attention and got the 9.5mm and realized it was too thin, so I had to get the 12.7mm caddy. Luckily they are cheap. But definitely a lesson to check the drive size if you swap it out. I actually just picked up an R720 16-bay SFF. I didn't think of it until I saw this vid, but may just grab a caddy for this as well.

[@The_Personal_Picks_SnM]

Thanks for showing the scratch connections and struggles faced cos that's what IT people are supposed to do, struggle and find the solution👍

[@KoromaTech]

Indeed. It's all about the struggle. That's what makes it beautiful.

[@simonmbi7759]

Excellent video. Courage and keep doing it. I am completely new to IT.

[@KoromaTech]

Thanks, and I sure will. Welcome to IT. I’m sure you’re going to love it. 💪🏾

[@Anarki]

hey thanks so much for this video, very useful and informative

[@syn6249]

Seriously such an amazing video! Thank you!

[@KoromaTech]

Thanks. I'm glad it was helpful.

[@robert-cope]

You can still use DHCP and have the router assign a specific IP against the server's MAC address. No need to manually set it in iDRAC. If you are managing lots of servers it's better to be able to assign them all in one place, i.e. the router, or other management software.

[@KoromaTech]

Thanks Robert, I agree. I did made that point in the video.

[@giovannigommba5938]

anc excellent way to explain REDONDENCY........PERFECT I'M LEARNING...I'M LEARNING......

[@tomikhoh]

Very helpful video!

[@KoromaTech]

I'm happy you found it useful.

[@xonemasters]

Thanks for being candid

[@KoromaTech]

You’re welcome.

[@kaiser27soze]

WHERE WERE YOU 24 hours ago?! Just got through putting together almost this exact setup on an r720. And dammit I wish Id seen your video first lol. Thanks anyway. Good stuff.

[@KoromaTech]

I was right here. Lol Thanks. 🙏🏾

[@santozard]

Like your intro. Thanks

[@KoromaTech]

Thanks. 🙏🏾

[@DavidConnerCodeaholic]

Thanks for the video!

[@KoromaTech]

Thanks for watching. 🙏🏾

[@kenmonroe35]

Very informative.

[@KoromaTech]

Thanks.

[@gregc5392]

brilliant tutorial!

[@KoromaTech]

Thank you. I happy it was helpful.

[@davew6969]

Awesome video!! Extremely helpful information. I did have a question as I am configuring one of those myself - do you how I can configure each of the NIC Ports to a certain IP address?

[@KoromaTech]

Hi Dave, Thanks. you can set a static ip in Bios, You should be able to do it in Proxmox as well after setup. You can also do it at the DHCP level, so you can do a DHCP reservation. You will need to know the MAC address for this (DHCP Reservation).

[@R1PPA-C]

Great video thank you, tomorrow I will be receiving my first server, r720 dual 2695v2, it's going to be used solely for one program as a render node to my main rig, basically just rendering animations so I can carry on using my main machine, I've never used a VM before, I'm running win 11 on my machine, and have a rack mount nas for project files. Do I need to VM or would it be simpler to just run win 11 on the r720? Will I be losing or gaining anything from not using VM? Thanks man, subbed

[@martinayllon3233]

Thanks it was a helpful video. One question how did you make proxmox to recognize your raid 6 array for your vms?

[@KoromaTech]

HI Martin, if you are talking about during the installation, then you need to create the raid first before installing Promxmox. You can use the raid controller to do so, or you can also do it in idrac. I hope that helps. Let me know if you have another question.

[@paullee107]

Hey man yer video is really helpful. I just got my first r330 ever and having lots of issues. Lol. Idrac won’t let me see do virtual connection, some license issue and - I wanted to install proxmox to a usb stick but server don’t like that. I’m slowing down and gonna get a small SSD. Hope I can find one of those drive holders like you have. I hope you do more videos, and if you ever wanna help a newbie let’s FaceTime!!

[@KoromaTech]

Hi Paul. You can get the drive holders from Amazon. Maybe we will FaceTime one of these days when I'm less busy. I might start doing live videos as well, and we are all newbies learning as we go. :)

[@olegborzykh7299]

Hi, thanks a lot. One question please, what about drivers - especially power management and embedded raid controller(perc s100 in my case) do you need to download/install it separately ?

[@KoromaTech]

HI, You're welcome, and you can update most of your drivers using idrac you will need to upload it.

[@GermanPrado]

Thanks for the video, i have a question for you, how many VM have you ever run with that server to get the most of it? Regards

[@KoromaTech]

Hi, I currently have about 5 VMs running. That is not nearly close to what the server is capable of. I plan to do a lot more soon, maybe i can have a better answer for you then. I will most likely make a video about that. Thanks

[@austinstallion8187]

Great work brother! I am learning a lot from watching you. I am a noob and just starting out with VMs and servers and Home labs - so am I right in thinking that once the server is setup and in my case will remain in the garage connected over cat 6 cable to my router and other PCs I can use any PC on the network to access and run the VMs like MacOS, Windows etc? My network is 1gb ethernet - so VMS are run from a web browser over the 1gbs ethernet?

[@KoromaTech]

HI Austin, sorry for the late response on this. You should be able to remote into the server just fine, as long as they are all on the same network.

[@OdenKnight]

Funny, I am doing something very similar with my 720. Are you keeping your hardware SAS controller? Good work, btw, and good luck on your tests. I’ll be right there with you this year.

[@KoromaTech]

HI Oden, Thanks and good luck to you as well. I am keeping the hardware SAS controller.

[@greenpig77]

Thanks for the video. I recently bought a powerEdge r720 and I'm having some issues where it's not recognizing hard disks. Can you help?

[@KoromaTech]

Hi Michael, sure. what do you mean by not recognizing hard disk? are you trying to use SSD? are you trying to set up Raid?

[@SebastianPatten]

Subbed!

[@KoromaTech]

Thank you. 🙏🏽🙏🏽

[@karlpitterson4432]

I have a Dell PowerEdge R420, what OS should I use? I plan on using it for Pen Testing, VM and learning for my Cybersecurity Certs.

[@KoromaTech]

HI Karl, you can use Proxmox, Vmware, or other Hypervisors. I like Proxmox that's why I went with it.

[@scottwilliams4157]

Keep it up. :) The People demand yet more! And, where ya from? -Sierra Leone, maybe?

[@KoromaTech]

HI Scott, How did you know? :) I am from Sierra Leone, and thanks for the kind words.

[@scottwilliams4157]

I was curious and I asked my Burundian cousin to "place" you. Looks like you just can't hide from a fellow African (or curious African-American). Right on! :D

[@KoromaTech]

@@scottwilliams4157 lol that's true, and your cousin is on point. Nice to meet you by the way, and thanks for subscribing. I hope we get to share knowledge in the future.

[@devans83]

Hi! I know its been a minute.. but which SSD caddy did you end up replacing the one in this video with? Thanks for the video!

[@KoromaTech]

Hey Darren, I ended up going with the second one.

[@paulminott150]

What size SSD do you recommend to boot proxmox from? Just decided to do what you did and get rid of my dvd drive. Ordered caddy already.

[@KoromaTech]

Hey Paul, I used 500 GB. That worked great for me.

[@tristanboi928]

I am trying to add the cd drive ssd like you have but my server didnt come with a cd drive so there is no cable to connect it to the motherboard. I have looked for days to find it does yours have a part number on it?

[@KoromaTech]

Hey, you need a “SATA Cable.” You should be able to get one from Amazon.

[@rodrigoroaduterte9415]

Servers (especially rack mountable) need to be run closed because their internal airflow has been optimized that way. If you run them open some parts might get worse cooling. To compensate that servers spin their fans faster => more noise you get.

[@KoromaTech]

Hi Rodrigo. Thanks for the input. Yeah, they tend to do that when they're open.

[@ukflyfisherman]

Interesting video - I am installing a similar setup with a small SSD drive and Raid setup for data. Out of curiosity, what did you format your raid data disks as - have read ZFS should be avoided as it likes to act like a software raid and "self heal" and as such doesn't like to sit on top of hardware raid and can easily corrupt.

[@thenetworkmystery]

Hey, I've followed the iDRAC setup you did (with my network credentials-IP, gateway, subnet mask). I've logged into the gateway and checked that everything is accurate, but the iDRAC still doesn't work. I've assigned it to DHCP. Then, when I logged into the gateway, and saw the "iDRAC-..." entry, and entered the IP address it assigned, it doesn't work. Any ideas how to fix it? I'm trying to quiet down the annoyingly loud fans on my R720XD using iDRAC.

[@KoromaTech]

Hey Rowan, it’s hard for me to tell you what’s wrong without seeing your configurations, but some of the things I suggest are…Make sure you set a static IP, make sure the reservation is set on the router/gateway, make sure you have the correct license.

[@bushmaster75]

Excellent video, your African and African-American accent rocks ...Dude, so no big deal. I enjoyed your tutorial and its immensely beneficial. Nonetheless, considering I have Dell PowerEdge R720, I have couple of quick inquiries. 1. Shall I make all eight SATA 3.5 Inch hard disk bays as one large virtual logical volume (under RAID 10) and keep my Linux (Red Hat, Ubuntu, Debian) plugged up with SATA Dock Mount Station through internal USB port ...pulling the wire through the back ... 2. Would I am be able to utilize all my 8 disk bays (combing roughly 4 TB, 500 GiB in each bay * 8 = 8 TB roughly) as one large virtual disk as data disk? Best!

[@supriyochatterjee4095]

Nice, can you kindly make a video on how to do firmware updates on Dell IDRAC, OME, CMC, ISILON with all details steps and what are the pre and post checks done for the same for any VMWARE vcenter servers associated with them before and after implementations of the firmware updates

[@KoromaTech]

Hi, I have lot more videos of different topics coming up soon. Might touch on some of those things.

[@supriyochatterjee4095]

@@KoromaTech OK kindly consider adding the above requested thing to your Playlist please

[@SimmanGodz]

For what its worth, RAID1 will actually give very good read speeds. Not as good as 0, but it can be better than 5 or 6.

[@KoromaTech]

Thanks, Simman.

[@user-tm7ue6fc2c]

Hi, i already setup raid 5 on bios and select all disk (8disk) And then i install proxmox. So its done? Or i must set on proxmox too?

[@KoromaTech]

You should be good, but you will need to setup your storage in Proxmox.

[@2adventure]

Nice Video!!! Thanks!!! Also People from Germany look this Video ;)

[@KoromaTech]

Thanks! 😃

[@XeonMC01]

are you using Open Manage Server Administrator (OMSA) on top of proxmox? if yes can you explain how you installed it and made it works?

[@KoromaTech]

Hi Davide. I'm not. I use iDRAC for management.

[@XeonMC01]

@@KoromaTech I was trying tonuse OMSA to manage PERC virtual disks, but using ZFS I ended up flashing my PERC controllers with IT firmware so no more need to use OMSA👍

[@killahb33]

Curious why not install on the raid array that's already setup?

[@KoromaTech]

I like to keep the two separate. Raid is for storage and SSD is for Proxmox. It helps keep things clean.

[@dominicburrows7317]

You are a life saver. This is awesome. I am a bigfan of Proxmox. My company has HyperV so, I am setting a home lab to learn hyper v. However, I want Proxmox on the bare metal and then have nested HyperV's. do you think this is good idea ? Do you have any videos on nested HyperV on to Proxmox ?

[@KoromaTech]

Hey Dominic, yes you can, and I do have a video on nested virtualization on Proxmox. The deep and performance depends on your hardware.

[@dominicburrows7317]

@@KoromaTech Thank you my friend!

[@dustee2680]

I would like to install Proxmox at work on our R350, but i believe that Dell does not officially support Proxmox. Will i encounter any problems with their support service if i install Proxmox anyway?

[@KoromaTech]

Hey, sorry for the late response. I have a Dell server and it works just fine. I will say go for it, but if it’s something that’s used for prod then I will say be careful.

[@austinstallion8187]

Just been watching videos about ZFS and how it so much more better than using the hardware raid - have you gone down the ZFS route?

[@KoromaTech]

Hi Austin, I have. That's how I have it set up.

[@austinstallion8187]

@@KoromaTech any chance of doing a video on creating zfs storage would be very welcomed …I have 8 x 4TB drives in mine and want to use all 32TB with ZFS for my Plex library but have no idea how to do it!

[@KoromaTech]

Niceee. I have my Plex server set up on an Optiplex, and I use my Synology for storage. I use the server mostly for breaking things and learning of course. lol I might make a video about how I set up ZFS on it, but no promise. :)

[@l3mons7]

Installing proxmox to ssd, does it allow to install vms to it as well for fast booting?

[@KoromaTech]

HIi Troy, you can, but I don't do that. I like to keep the 2 separated.

[@l3mons7]

@@KoromaTech I was also thinking install pro mox to USB and use SSD for VM images and then do backups to the raid?

[@desaironak11]

Hi Just a quick question I have installed the proxmox on raid hardrive but it's not booting. I have also disable the internal USB and my boot option is Raid Hard drive. What am I doing wrong ? If you could guide me please. Thanks

[@KoromaTech]

Hi Ronak, sorry for the late response. Can you send me an image of the error message you're getting?

[@desaironak11]

@@KoromaTech it's all good now. Thanks for your response

[@KoromaTech]

@@desaironak11 Perfect! Sorry for the late response again. I normally try to respond on the weekends. Feel free to email me if any questions.

[@ewoldtmark82]

I can't say anything right either and I am not African. loved your video and idea's

[@KoromaTech]

😅 it’s always a struggle. Lol and thanks. 🙏🏾

[@liamgibbins]

I got my R710 earlier today, it sees the usb but proxmox wont install because it can not find the cdrom, Tried mounting it but it wont have it.

[@KoromaTech]

Hi Liam, Make sure the SATA cable is connected, and go into the SATA setting and enable it. 12:21

[@kevinleoni5142]

I had the same problem and I just created a virtual disk from the bios, and it worked, maybe it's not the best performance solution, but it works

[@leahlambert5737]

how did you get a iDRAC key

[@KoromaTech]

It came with the server.

[@bwillz2230]

Could you provide the link to the ssd caddy?

[@KoromaTech]

Hi, i have added it. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

[@bwillz2230]

@@KoromaTech thank you sir!

[@betterwithrum]

there are two usb ports on the back. I agree with putting the USB on the internal port, but I'm not sure why you'd say there aren't USB ports on the back????

[@KoromaTech]

That was a mistake on my part. It’s had been a long day. 😊

[@pdarrell]

You have two usb ports at the back next to the four port nic.

[@KoromaTech]

I sure do. That was a mistake on my part.

[@DeanO418]

if you had IDRAC why didnt you install proxmox direct to ssd?

[@KoromaTech]

Hey Dean, Proxmox is installed on the SSD.

[@Carpesimia]

So, you mentioned multiple times how there are no usb ports on the back. There are two, and are visible even in the video at 4:38 when you are showing us that there arent any. Look to the left of your network cable. I have the same r720 and this is where i have my mouse and keyboard plugged in. I use the front for flash drives and such.

[@KoromaTech]

Hi @Carpesimia, Thanks for the input, and you're correct, I missed that part in the video.

[@freddobrowski2974]

I TRYED TO INSTAL PROXMOX I USED RUFUS BUT IT WOULDNT WORK .I THINK MY USB STICK MIGHT BE GOING BAD .

[@KoromaTech]

Hi Fred, use Etcher. Rufus might be the issue. (www.balena.io/etcher/)

[@VertoX7]

What about RAID 50 or 60? The issues with RAID 5/6 is worse write performance, but it is very cost effective. I would never do RAID 5 because if you loose a drive and have a read error on another drive you can loose the whole array. RAID 60 I feel is the best of all worlds, but you do need at least 8 drives and 4 drives will be lost to parity essentially.

[@kevinleoni5142]

btw there are 2 usb port on the back

[@KoromaTech]

Thanks Kevin.

[@frostsmaker8966]

Don't install proxmox on the single SSD drive, if the SSD needs replacement then you will get into trouble. Use RAID for proxmox and storage. You can use software RAID such as zfs or hardware RAID. People like the software RAID because it really does the job. But if you have hardware RAID, then use it and be sure you have a spare RAID controller the exact same thing in case your RAID controller didn't work in the future.

[@KoromaTech]

This is good info! Thanks for sharing and I'm sure it will be helpful to others as well!

[@majicMix911]

What an awful video

[@KoromaTech]

May I ask why? I will love to know so I can try to do better next time. Thanks.

[@dominicburrows7317]

Hi mate. I am having so many issues while installing Proxmox. I think I am doing something wrong here. Initially I had RAID 5 configured and was able to successfully installed Proxmox. I was able to connect to GUI but I had the below issues the first time. Below are what I see in the disk section. And when I go to the directory, to create directory, it is empty. I am sure there is something I am missing. I have SAS drives and I have set up RAID 5 on this machine. Any advice is greatly appreciated.  /dev/sda unknown partitions 12.00 TB Yes PERC_H710P  /dev/sda1 partition BIOS boot 1.03 MB Yes  /dev/sda2 partition EFI 536.87 MB Yes  /dev/sda3 partition LVM 12.00 TB Yes So I had to wipe everything and reinstall Proxmox with RAID 5 configured. and now I am getting the below error message. I am using Poweredge R720XD. Any advice is greatly appreciated. I used Rufus to burn to USB. Installation failed failed to prepare EFI boot using Grub on /dev/sda2 : unable to install the EFI boot loader on /dev/sda removing diversion of sbin/start-stop-daemon

[@KoromaTech]

Try using Etcheh instead of Rufus and give it another go.