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June 19th, 2014 06:00

Can the M420, M520 and M620 blades boot Ubuntu server from redundant 6Gb SD cards

The title pretty much says it all.

I'm looking to boot metal to a very minimal OS that needs no ongoing disk access. I'm NOT looking to use virtualisation.

Is there compatibility issues with some SD cards? What classes are supported by the servers? Any capacity max?

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9.3K Posts

July 3rd, 2014 08:00

I'm not 100% sure, but I think I remember someone posting on one of the boards that they used 8GB SD cards without an issue on their PowerEdge. I don't remember which exact model server that was though.

I'd suggest to go no further than SDHC (so avoid SDXC (typically 64GB and higher).

I would also suggest to look for cards that are rated for higher operating temperatures as the temperature inside a (blade) server is higher than 'normal' temperatures in which SD cards are used (in cameras and such). For example; Monster (known for their high priced cables) has a 'safari' series SD cards that are rated for higher operating temperatures. I use one of these in my car stereo, which gets quite hot in the sun here (southern state in the USA). I don't know how reliable it would be in a server, so I'd suggest to look around for reviews a bit.

19 Posts

July 10th, 2015 04:00

I'm interested in doing this also. I asked our Dell rep and he said that you can boot from the SD card but that Dell don't support Ubuntu as it's a non-commercial version of Linux.

Just wondering if you got this working and if it needed any special instructions?

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