I purchased a couple R610 servers which has been a constant source of frustration lately. I got a heck of a deal on them with a single 2.93 Ghz processor and 96GB RAM, so I cannibalized one and got a dual processor with 192GB RAM and then started putting the other back together with extra parts from other servers I had upgraded. That was where the problems started...
I tried putting in 2X L5640 (2.26Ghz - 6 Core / 12MB) but the system constantly cycled and wouldn't even post to the first screen of testing memory. I figured maybe there was a problem with those processors and put in a couple of my old 2.0Ghz quad core E-series processors which worked just fine and ordered a couple new X5680 which also didn't work when received.
In the meantime, we had tried installing a couple 1TB SATA drives and a couple SSD SATA drives and found that the PERC 6i wasn't compatible with SATA(!!!). I found people having similar problems with this setup here: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1228261
I contacted the place I purchased them from and they were awesome and we swapped it out for another R610 that was a little newer and had the PERC6iR installed, and worked with those better processors, but still having issues with the SSD and the other SATA drive where sometimes it will see one of the drives, sometimes not during configuration. If I move things around, to different bays, then I get a separate group of problems, but everything works perfectly if I use 6 SAS.
At this point I don't mind purchasing a different SAS Controller with 6Gb/s, but not sure if I have to worry about compatibility with the server, or if I have to use a PERC card. I tried putting the newer PERC6iR card in the other server I had put together with the 192GB RAM, and got an error "Invalid PCIe card found in the Internal Storage Slot - System Halted", so not sure that I can just go buy a shiny new SAS Controller and have it work.
I would love some advice on what I am doing wrong here, I never expected to have all these issues with these servers and not sure what to do next.