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January 20th, 2019 22:00
PowerEdge R710 iDRAC6
So think I bricked my iDRAC card. Was going through updates, starting with getting the BIOS to 6.6. Then Started in on iDRAC, going from 1.3 (I believe) and going to 1.85, which failed from the OS (Server 2012 R2) noting something about failing a secure copy. Seen something on these forums about getting the firmimg.d6 and updating via web portal. So I did that and after a long wait the fans suddenly ramped up like it was rebooting and the fans just never went down. About 20 minutes later, which might not have been long enough to wait, I rebooted the server from the OS. When it comes back up it says "System Services disabled," or something of the sort the F2 option, in the upper right and after getting the NICs and PERC up it hangs on "initializing the Remote Access Card." Tried clearing the NVRAM via jumper, no change.
Time to buy a new iDRAC card?
Thanks
Dell-DylanJ
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January 28th, 2019 06:00
I would look at replacing the board. The system won't let us reflash it, power drain and NVRAM clear failed, which would only leave the board replacement at this time. You should be able to get along without the iDRAC, but reboots will take longer and fans are going to run at 100%, because the iDRAC is also the fan controller.
Dell-DylanJ
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January 21st, 2019 07:00
Good morning,
When it comes to iDRAC troubleshooting, the power drain and NVRAM clear are the big two things. If you haven't unplugged the server and held the power button down for ~30 seconds, it's worth trying. Failing that, you can try to see if it will respond to another firmware attempt or command line. It's rare, but I've seen the iDRAC respond to both of those things on couple of occasions.
As for the iDRAC itself, the iDRAC Enterprise is an add-in module, but the module that houses all the logic is built onto the motherboard. Replacing the iDRAC Enterprise module wouldn't help your case, because it is a pass-through module for the components built onto the motherboard. It enables the networking for the iDRAC, but the card contains no logic itself.
Dell-DylanJ
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January 21st, 2019 13:00
You would need an OS to interact with it by command line. Generally, this message times out and let's you continue on into the OS. There's only been a handful of instances where I've seen this halt booting. Do you not get a Press F1 to continue type message when it times out?
If it does eventually let you boot, you can use something like racadm getsysinfo to see if the system would respond to one of the most basic commands we can give it. If it doesn't boot, then this option wouldn't be on the table to even explore.
Denzle
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January 21st, 2019 13:00
I actually haven't tried waiting it out, I just let those loading dots get to the edge of the screen and called it a night. I should really work on my patience. I might not even be in this situation had I not assumed it was hung and waited longer for the 1.85 firmware update to complete. I'll boot it up tonight and hopefully it'll let me boot into the OS so I can give that a try.
Thank you Dylan
Denzle
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January 21st, 2019 13:00
Hi Dylan,
Thank you for your reply. Sounds like trying a firmware attempt with the command line is really my last option here then. I did SSH into the iDRAC card and use 'racadm racreset' to clear out the failed firmware update attempt, as it was saying an update was in progress in the web portal so I couldn't try with the firmimg.d6 file, but other than that I'm not familiar with how I would go about doing with the command line. Could you offer some guidance in that area? I'm not able to ping the iDRAC address or SSH to it anymore and I'm not able to boot into an OS, its still hanging at the 'Initializing Remote Access Controller.'
Thank you
Denzle
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January 23rd, 2019 12:00
You were right about the initialization timing out. It takes about a full 15 minutes to finally get into the operating system, but it does get there. I tried running the 1.85 from a .exe, and it failed because 2012 R2 is not a supported operating system. So, I installed 2008 R2 and tried again, but this time it gave the error "The update package is not compatible with your system configuration." I installed the Dell Systems Management Tools v6.2.0 to get the local racadm CLI tools and entered racadm getsysinfo like you said.
C:\racadm getsysinfo RAC Information: RAC Date/Time = Firmware Version = Firmware Build = Last Firmware Update = Hardware Version = MAC Address = Common settings: Register DNS RAC Name = DNS RAC Name = Current DNS Domain = Domain Name from DHCP = IPv4 settings: Enabled = Current IP Address = Current IP Gateway = Current IP Netmask = DHCP Enabled = Current DNS Server 1 = Current DNS Server 2 = DNS Servers from DHCP = IPv6 settings: Enabled = Current IP Address 1 = Current IP Gateway = Prefix Length = Autoconfig = Link Local IP Address = / Current IP Address 2 = / Current IP Address 3 = / Current IP Address 4 = / Current IP Address 5 = / Current IP Address 6 = / Current IP Address 7 = / Current IP Address 8 = / Current IP Address 9 = / Current IP Address 10 = / Current IP Address 11 = / Current IP Address 12 = / Current IP Address 13 = / Current IP Address 14 = / Current IP Address 15 = / DNS Servers from DHCPv6 = Current DNS Server 1 = Current DNS Server 2 = System Information: System Model = System BIOS Version = BMC Firmware Version = Service Tag = Host Name = OS Name = Power Status = Watchdog Information: Recovery Action = Present countdown value = seconds Initial countdown value = seconds Embedded NIC MAC Addresses: NIC1 Ethernet = iSCSI = NIC2 Ethernet = iSCSI = NIC3 Ethernet = iSCSI = NIC4 Ethernet = iSCSI = =============================================================================== IMPORTANT NOTE! The RAC is unable to communicate with the BMC. This condition may occur because of (1) no BMC is present, (2) missing or disfunctional IPMI-related software components. Many RAC features depend on BMC connectivity in order to work properly, and you may see failures as a result. ===============================================================================It responded though I don't know if that in itself is still a good thing considering the response. I attempted to update the firmware with racadm -d c:\temp -p -u (C:\temp being where the firmimg.d6 file is located).
Time to buy a new motherboard, or is there hope for this one yet?
Thank you
Denzle
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January 26th, 2019 12:00
Bump
Denzle
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January 28th, 2019 07:00
Was holding that out as a last resort, but looks like that's where it is now. Will definitely be replacing the board, that server is too loud for an apartment as small as mine.
Thank you for all your help