I've got one of these for testing projects from work at home and got more than I bargained for with the time I've spent on it due to the storage handing/Perc 6/i cards.
My particular model came with the following:
2U Rack Mount Server with Rails
2xOpteron 2373 EE (Quad Core, there is a 6-core version that can be found at times)
16GB RAM
2 x 250GB Seagate SATA
2 x Dell Perc 6/i (horrible and a nightmare to work........
One thing to remember is that you need MegaCli to do the flashing.
You also need the correct file,I tried at least 2 different Perc 6 firmwares from Dell that kept getting rejected as corrupt by MegaCli(they were really the wrong version). I have an external PCI-E Dell 6 Perc/I butI chose images from the 'Integrated" on motherboard version as it was allI could find. They are different, and below is my first time finding success.........
I flashed an LSI Logic firmware to it and it broke the BIOS (cannot do Ctrl+R) for booting purposes but allows other functionality to work normally.
I tried downgrading to a Dell firmware for Perc 6i but it won't work, not even with MegaCli
wget http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER00416606M/1/SAS-RAID_Firmware_W83M2_LN32_6.3.1-0003_A14.BIN
--2013-08-26 12:53:39-- http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER00416606M/1/SAS-RAID_Firmware_W83M2_LN32_6.3.1-0003_A14.BIN
Resolvi........
I chose this because I heard a lot of stories about scams and that many providers I contacted said they can't unlock the Canadian I717s (one said "my Bell server" is down).
This method worked perfectly on my Bell I717M and should work for all I717 in Canada, I was able to insert a foreign SIMcard. This will work abroad too but remember entering CWM mode is different for I717's in other countries (at least theUS).
Step 1 - Root + CWM........