Dell Poweredge 2950 Raid Battery

Yes, although the amber battery light may stay on for several minutes, because 1. the new battery may not be fully charged, 2. it may take some time for the controller to assess the overall health of the battery, and 3. your version of ESM/BMC/OMSA may not properly flush the event from the display, in which case you will need to use OMSA to clear the Hardware Logs.

How long has your battery been showing the amber message?  If less than 12 hours, give it another 12 hours to see if it resolves itself ... the PERC's have a "learning cycle" that it puts the battery through automatically every 90 days, wherein it drains the battery, then recharges it.  During this time you will see a voltage message for the battery and a message about the cache being disabled.

So all I have to do is:

1. Turn off the server.

2. Follow the documentation for replacing the RAID battery.

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/pe2900/en/hom/html/install.htm#wp1137151

3. Turn on the server.

And everything should boot normally like it did before and without the orange LED with the error: "W1228 ROMB Batt < 24hr"?

It is still showing the message "W1228 ROMB battery  < 24 hr" on the led which is orange. Btw, do I have to replace the battery for other servers eventually because the other servers were there around the same time as this one.

You don't necessarily need to replace any other batteries.  Their life is very long, and while it is not unusual for one to go bad, it would be unusual for a batch to go bad.

Have you cleared your Hardware Logs in OMSA (System, Logs tab)?

I restarted another server this morning and after restarting the same message appears on the other server. Now I have 2 servers with the same message:

"W1228 ROMB Batt < 24 hr"

The previous server is now showing the message:

"E1211 ROMB Batt"

What do you think is the problem?

I have not put in a replacement battery on it as yet.

Error indicates less than 24 hrs. of charge, issue can go a couple ways where a battery charge kicks off which is normal, or of the issue persists, would be an indication that the battery might be going out.

This error indicates that the PERC5I RAID battery has less then 24 hours of charge left on it. This is more of a warning message.  How long has the unit been online with the replacement battery?

What will happen if I don't replace the RAID battery on the server?

If running your PERC without a battery, the error would always be persistant.  As far as your data, anytime there is a battery issue, the controller changes from write back to write thru mode.  Controller would essentially be in a less than optimal mode without the battery as it was intended to use with the array.

If you don't replace the battery, then it will disable the controller cache, which will affect controller performance and leaves your data more prone to corruption in the event of a system crash (power, etc.).

You should be able to replace the ROMB battery without losing data or configuration information.  When the battery drains, the PERC controller will automatically turn off the ability of the PERC RAID controller to cache updates, and it will require updates to be written to disk.  This affects performance, although it may not even be noticeable by the user.  When the battery has been replaced, caching should resume.

Good day Sir,

I have the same problem, and I need to confirm that if I restarted the server to replace the battery  will not affect RAID configuration

thank you  

Hi Gaberh

No, replacing the ROMB battery will not affect the RAID configuration.