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Choosing the Right RAID Kit
Hello, I recently inherited several PowerEdge 2850 servers. Each of them has lots of hard drives, but no RAID kit. All of them have a riser with the LSI Logic chip installed. I purchased a RAID kit labelled "Dell H1813 Perc 4i", but not all is going well. I can get into the BIOS and configure it to user the RAID, but then the machine will not boot. Sometimes it hangs at "Remote Access Controller Detected" with the floppy drive light solid (nothing in it) and other times it just keeps rebooting itself. It appears that when it gets stuck the LCD turns amber. Unfortuantely the display is dammaged so I can't actually read anything on it.
Can someone point me in the right direction? I've read here that some controllers are picky about the RAID memory stick.
The RAID stick is labelled: 256MB 1Rx8 PC2-3200R-333-12-A0 (DDR2, 400, CL3, ECC, REG)
The system memory is labelled: 1GB 1Rx4 PC2-3200R-333-11-C0
Thanks!
Sieggs1
2 Posts
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July 28th, 2011 08:00
Hello,
I just came across your question on the web.
There are several components that are required to implement RAID internally with the PowerEdge 2850 server. The RAID chip itself is the LSI Logic ship on the riser board. In order to activate it, you must have the RAID battery (part G3399), 256GB DIMM (part X1560) and a small key that plugs into the system board in a blue slot in between the main system memory and the power supply housing. This key can be part H1813, NJ020 or K4359.
All three components are sold as at kit here: http://store.flagshiptech.com/products/Dell-PowerEdge-1850-2800-2850-PERC-4-RAID-Key-Kit-%26-Battery-H1813-K4359-NJ020-G3399.html
If all these components are installed and you are still seeing error messages or the system is hanging, it may be a failure of the LSI Logic chip on the riser board or any one of the three RAID components.
However, you might want to try resetting the RAID configuration back to the factory defaults to be sure it is not looking for a configuration that is no longer present. During bootup, hit Control+M when it asked for it to get into the RAID utility. Then look for the option to restore to factory defaults or reset the RAID.
With the Remote Access Controller Detected message, you might just want to remove that controller while you are troubleshooting the RAID setup to be sure that is not causing the boot hangups. It is the small card that sits on top of the system board under the two fans on the back of the machine. It has a single NIC port that sticks out of the back of the chassis.
Best of luck,
Rob S.