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Today I scheduled to move some components of one of the file servers I was using to another one and remove this 4U server from the rack. Another Dell PowerEdge 2600 was waiting to get those components installed. I added the memory, harddisks and the second Intel Xeon 2.4 GHZ CPU and I than turn on the server. The server started but no input on the tft monitor . Hhm I than started to remove one by one of the new components I installed into the system. First memory than harddisks and in the end I removed the second installed CPU and the system boot. I than add memory and harddisks and server come up again.  

So I ended with this second CPU and the server did not boot if it was installed. I started to google and basically did not find anything in the right direction. My last option was Dell support website and I logged on with my registered account, located the system with System tag and went to the servers documentation. After reading for couple of minutes in the Microprocessor Upgrade Kit Contents section I realized I had forgot to add the VRM .
What is VRM??
VRM is the voltage regulator module that senses the microprocessor’s voltage requirements and ensures that the correct voltage is maintained.

I installed the VRM module in the second VRM connector and booted the system. It detected my second installed cpu ;).

Two 2.4 GHZ Processors, Processor Bus: 400 MHz, L2 cache 512 KB Advanced

 

Last year I installed three Dell PowerEdge 1950 1U servers and since than I used them in production as VMWare Server hosts. Couple times when creating and migrating the guest machines I received a warning that my CPU was VT capable but not enabled. To enable this option reboot the Dell server, hit F2 to enter the BIOS and change the Intel VT Virtualization Technology CPU setting. Each month there is a scheduled maintenance and if there is a security update than it will be installed and server reboot, but than I will need to be there and enter the BIOS by console or DRAC console. For that reason I created two scripts to check the CPU bios setting and if required execute the second cmd script to enable the VT option.

Please make sure the Dell OpenManage software is installed. The commands available for Windows and ESX operating systems.

@echo off
REM Ivan Versluis / Ivan1980(at)networknet.nl / Dell PowerEdge Intel VT check
omreport chassis biossetup & omreport chassis processors
pause

@echo off
REM Ivan Versluis / Ivan1980(at)networknet.nl / Dell PowerEdge Intel VT enable
omconfig chassis biossetup attribute=cpuvt setting=enabled
omconfig chassis biossetup attribute=dbs setting=enable
pause

For more information check out this document.  The enable script has been executed and I only need to get new security updates for this month. I’ve seen no security update  information from Microsoft last days and I will need to wait until next WSUS assigned patches will reboot the servers.