trying to install SLES 11.3 for x86_64 onto a dell R920 server.
I know the dvd is good, i've used it numerous times to install on other machines no problem, and i've also done a disk check of it when it prompts you at the beginning of the installation.

problem is i can start the installation where it beings installing all the rpm's. but then it hangs. has done it to me i think 3 times so far, the last time i got the bright idea of looking at the rpm it hung up on. I haven't tried again to see if it hangs at the same rpm point.
But it installs libcdio-paranoia0 then installs libebl1, and hangs on libebl1. That's LibebL1, with numeral one at the end.

so my question is, if it's not a problem with a sles11.3 rpm could it be i'm missing Dell system drivers required for the installation?
I'm familiar with installing windows xp/7 on Dell pc's, and nearly always you have to download chipset driver and the network driver from Dell and run those after windows installs... if you don't want a bunch of unrecognized hardware in device manager and want the network port to work. However with Windows the install never hangs and at least finishes, where as with SLES it does not finish and gives no error.

I've looked up the drivers for the Dell R920 i have and these 2 seem the most relevant:
1) drivers for OS deployment, 156MB, Drivers-for-OS-Deployment_Application_9D54F_LN_14.08.10_A00.BIN
2) Dell driver pack for Linux OS, 5GB, LCDRVPCK_LIN_14.10.200.105.ISO.

do i need those? and if so or if it won't hurt i should try them, how do you properly put those on a 8GB USB disk or burn to DVD?
the system has only one dvd installed, but i can use an external usb dvd drive. So do i simply put the rpm files on the DVD or usb stick, do i just format the USB at FAT or what?

tried a few more times, same result. hangs up on a different rpm each time about 25% into the installation process. this last time was libjpeg is hung on.

figured it out, during boot need to enter the Dell Life Cycle Controller which does a whole bunch of crap. the important part it seems is the option for RAID setup and OS deployment. I was able to skip raid since i set that up manually by doing Ctrl-R during boot and getting into the PERC raid setup screen.
fyi - when i initially tried installing sles the sles installation when probing hardware never found any hard drives installed, that was because i had to configure my one drive as non-raid ahci in the RAID setup.
so went into the OS deployment part of the Life Cycle Ctrlr, it gave like 5+ options for operating systems. It looked like it was defaulted on Microsoft Windows, or Windows Server whatever it said. But it gave options for Redhat linux i think among others, more importantly "Suse Enterprise Server 11 sp3 x64" which is what i was using. so i checked that said finish, it rebooted a couple times and then during linux installation I checked install from add-on media.
I happened to format a usb stick as FAT32 and put those rpm's and bin files that i downloaded from Dell onto it. When choosing install add-on from usb stick, I saw my USB stick along with Dell iDRAC flash card. on that idrac it had all the drivers pertaining to sles 11.3 for this dell server, the most important i guess because it was automatically selected was ls-megaraid-something along with intel-igb. so i left those 2 checked, the megaraid one was the same as on my usb stick, did the install and it worked without hanging. in fact on that idrac i selected all the drivers.