Just a quick Q re: 'boot time' in our PER320.. Today (yes, Easter Sunday, of all days ...) I needed to shutdown this server to do a 'disk upgrade' (larger, of course) and was reminded of something I wanted to ask this forum regarding what seems to me to be a phenomenally'slow' boot-up from total power-down.
FYI: The hardware in this server consists of the 'stock' E5-2407 XEON 2.2 GHz 'quad-core' that it came with, the 'upgraded' 32 GB of RAM I added last fall, the 'stock' RAID-1 2 TB 'boot' /DATA drives, a third 2 TB disk I added late this past year, and now this brand new W/D 'Red' 4 TB disk I just added. When I powered-up again I was reminded of the amazingly slow boot-up we've been experiencing for quite some time ... From a total 'power-off' scenario to a 'functional desktop' takes IN EXCESS of 12 to as much as 15-16 minutes .. which I believe is kinda 'excessive'... (or maybe I'm just impatient..). Today, it seemed to take, like, FOREVER to 'clear' the 'usual' boot messages about '..waiting for the local user account" or " waiting for the local group policy ...", etc.. All of our earlier servers were locally built "white-box' tower systems with Core2-Quad processors or i5 processors (all of which were clocking at 2.8 - 3.2 GHz and accommodated up to 16 GB of RAM), but this is the first Dell XEON rackmount system we've ever had, and as such, I have no idea what the 'normal' boot-times SHOULD be, considering this system hardware ... Does this sound like a 'reasonable' boot-time? As I remember it, the old servers booted up practically as fast a workstation desktop (well, maybe... my memory being what it is ...) albeit that these were all running Server 2000 or Server 2003, at that time. So, is Server 2012 Essentials really THAT slow and cumbersome, or is this something to do with simple processing power/speed? - or do I have problem I need to 'research'..? As yet, I have not gotten 'approval' for the E5-2470 'octal-core' that I want for this, and my hope is that WHEN I get approval, this will help me to 'cope' with what I see as a significantly slow boot-up. Am I just impatient, or is this 'normal' ? Or AM I looking at some issue with this server?