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195 Posts
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33864
March 21st, 2003 16:00
disabling auto-power-on after power outage
After a recent outage I was assigned to see if there is a way to stop the Dell (and other Intel based boxes) in the server room from resuming previous power state after an outage. Having them come on automatically causes problems that generally take longer to resolve than just shutting everything down and starting over. The room has a decent UPS, but we probably have between one and two incidents a year when the outage outlasts battery coverage. There is a project on the board to design and implement an automated shutdown scheme, but it is basically an un-funded mandate, and there is little hope of that changing anytime soon.
I had hoped that, like most desktop machines, there would be an easy to set option in the BIOS that would let me correct this, but this morning I had a chance to look at one of the boxes (a PE2400 to be specific), and I didn't see the option I was looking for.
Suggestions?
UKJB
1 Message
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May 7th, 2003 09:00
Hi ZaphodB
I have the same problem as you - I have a rack full of PE2650s and PE6650s, and would like then to stay off after a power outage. Having them boot up before the SAN and Backup Robot causes all sorts of problems. Most of the posts in these forums are from people wanting the enable rather than disable this "feature".
Did you get anywhere, or are you still trying to sort this?
Cheers
UKJB
krthompson11
2 Posts
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June 2nd, 2003 15:00
ZaphodB
195 Posts
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June 2nd, 2003 15:00
If you want a power-edge to automatically reboot after an external power outage you are in luck; that is exactly what they do. The problem I was having is that I want them to stay down after power is restored.
If a power-edge is up and running and you pull the plug on it, it will reboot when power is turned back on.
If you shutdown a power-edge before it loses power then it will stay off if power is lost, then returns.
I would refer to that as "resuming previous state" after an outage. I have often seen BIOS options in desktop machines that allow you to specify what action you want taken after an outage. The three typical options are:
1) stay off,
2) turn on, and
3) resume previous state.
I would like to have these same three options for my servers, but I have not been able to locate any way to modify this behavior. If anyone has any alternatives or suggestions I am still interested in hearing them.
sabia_dave
1 Message
0
June 3rd, 2003 01:00
IIRC there's a post somewhere in the PE archives indicating that this behavior is by design in the PowerEdge BIOS series. If true this is very unfortunate....I would also vote for making AC power-restoration behavior selectable like in most desktop BIOSes. If you have a server farm and power is somehow suddenly interrupted to a bunch of them (blown UPS or failed battery packs, etc.) you don't want a huge inrush current when the mains come back on.
From the example in front of me (PE1600SC) I think the BIOS needs a bunch of work to make it considerably more configurable and fix problems (e.g. the broken PnP).
jwclb
5 Posts
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June 12th, 2003 16:00
Hello
I need to be able to set the PowerEdge 2650's and 1750's to remain in standby mode after a power outage too. ideally we would like to have them behave like the IBM X-series where you can power them on through the management RS-422 port from a central management console hence staging the power on of an entire cluster in sequence with the power on of any other devices (I used to have 1400 X-3xx servers set up like that).
I've noticed that these PowerEdge 2650's have a management port on them that seems to be assigned a default IP address of 192.168.0.120. Any idea of how to use that port? Maybe we can get to the required settings through that?
Of course, that would mean either using that port only on the test bed or coughing up for an additional network port per server (a bit pricey and a cabling nightmare with our current 400 PowerEdge 2650's) especially when compared with the IBM RSA concept where an additional management 10/100BaseT port is required for every 12 servers, but if we can get it to do what we want through that port, it might be worth it.
Regards,
John
jvolenceCMK
2 Posts
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August 15th, 2005 14:00
I have a PowerEdge 2600 (tower), and another 2800 on its way. Maybe this is too much to ask, but I would love to have a delayed startup feature.
By this, I mean that I can set one of them to immediately startup after power fail, and the other to wait 30 seconds.
I have an APC Smart-UPS that does a soft shutdown. This means that, when the power actually does die, that the server is already shut off. This is a problem in the "restore last power state" scenario, as I want them to come back on.
Sometimes I am off-site or it is late at night when the power fails, and I have users coming in at 5am that need that server.