Hi, We have not validated any configurations without risers. It may affect the airflow of the chassis.
A technician removed an expansion card riser (the only one) from the dual-CPU PowerEdge R630 server in our remote data center. The server now runs with no risers installed and reports critical health alert "HWC2005 System board Riser cable or interconnect failure. Check connection". VMware ESXi hypervisor which is installed on this server runs normally (apparently). Owner's manual says: "A System Event Log (SEL) event is logged if an expansion card riser is unsupported or missing. It does not prevent your system from turning on and no BIOS POST message or F1/F2 pause is displayed." Troubleshooting guide says: "Typically, the minimum to POST configuration for rack servers is PSU1, CPU1, memory module in A1 slot, and the default riser without expansion cards". To the best of my knowledge, this was true until and including 11G PowerEdge rack servers. It also contradicts the statement in the Owner's manual. However, neither manual gives an explanation about the eventual consequences of running a PowerEdge R630 server with no expansion card risers installed. So my question is, will the R630 run normally without any expansion card riser installed, i.e. is such a configuration supported by Dell ?
PowerEdge R630 expansion card riser removed