Expansion Cards And Expansion Card Riser; Expansion Card Installation Guidelines - Dell EMC VxRail E Series Owner's Manual

The following are the recommended guidelines for installing memory modules:
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Expansion cards and expansion card riser

An expansion card in the appliance is an add-on card that can be inserted into an expansion slot on
the system board or riser card to add enhanced functionality to the appliance through the
expansion bus.

Expansion card installation guidelines

Your appliance supports PCI Express Generation 3 expansion cards.
This table describes guidelines for appliance supporting three PCIe expansion cards.
Table 35 Expansion card riser configurations
Expansion card
The following table provides guidelines for expansion cards priority to ensure proper cooling and
mechanical fit.
The following table provides guidelines for installing expansion cards to ensure proper cooling and
mechanical fit. The expansion cards with the highest priority should be installed first using the slot
priority indicated. All the other expansion cards should be installed in the card priority and slot
priority order.
This table provides information on the slot priority for 1A + 2A riser configuration
RDIMMs and LRDIMMs must not be mixed.
If memory modules with different speeds are installed, they will operate at the speed of the
slowest installed memory module(s) or slower depending on appliance DIMM configuration.
Populate memory module sockets only if a processor is installed. For single-processor
appliance, sockets A1 to A12 are available. For dual-processor appliance, sockets A1 to A12 and
sockets B1 to B12 are available.
Populate all the sockets with white release tabs first, and then the black release tabs.
Mixing of more than one memory module capacities in the appliance is not supported.
In a dual-processor configuration, the memory configuration for each processor should be
identical. For example, if you populate socket A1 for processor 1, then populate socket B1 for
processor 2, and so on.
VxRail Appliances require that you populate six memory modules per processor for single
processor configurations and twelve memory modules per processor for dual-processor
configurations (one DIMM per channel) at a time to maximize performance.
Note: To avoid data loss, ensure that you refer to the procedures in the SolVe Desktop
application before performing any memory or expansion card replacement or upgrade
procedures.
Note: A System Event Log (SEL) event is logged if an expansion card riser is unsupported or
missing. It does not prevent your appliance from turning on and no BIOS POST message or
F1/F2 pause is displayed.
PCIe slots on
riser the riser
Riser 1A Slot 1
Slot 2
Riser 2A Slot 3
Note: The expansion card slots are not hot-swappable.
Dell EMC VxRail Appliances on PowerEdge Servers E Series Owner's Manual
Processor Height
connection
Processor 1 Low Profile
Processor 1 Low Profile
Processor 2 Low Profile
Replacing and adding hardware
Length Slot
width
Half Length x16
Half Length x16
Half Length x16
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