Hello Ed,
I just started looking into adding support for the dell r610.
I really don't want to discourage you, but if I'm looking at the correct datasheet, this machine is using Nehalem/Westmere EP processors (e.g. Xeon X5550 etc.). If that is the case, this is no project suited for a coreboot beginner: It's unlikely that Intel would give out any useful documentation about these processors and there is no platform alike (i.e. with QPI) in coreboot. Reverse engineering is possible, but as a spare-time project this could take years.
Maybe you can find another system that fits your workloads and already has some coreboot chipset support. Though, on the Intel server front it's not looking very good. Intel fought hard to keep these platforms coreboot free.
Nico