15 Posts

524

January 13th, 2022 14:00

PowerEdge 840 Salvageable?

Hello.  I'm trying to figure out what is wrong with the PowerEdge 840 that the company I work for has had for the past 14 years.  It has served the company well without issues but right before Christmas it died.  It would keep rebooting and never boot to the OS.  I turned it off, waited and turned back on and would get stuck at "Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility".  I like learning about computers so I volunteered to try and figure out what's wrong (doing so on my own time).  The company ordered a new server and is currently working off a backup.  The company doesn't have an IT person and from my understanding someone came to set up the server and that was it.  I don't know much about servers but would like to learn about them by trying to fix them.  Would greatly appreciate any insight on what's going wrong with this computer, and your time reading my description and questions.  Here's what's going on:

When it is just plugged in (not powered on) the green and amber light would alternatingly flash.

When it is booting up, Green light would stay on and Amber light would flash

I took off the front panel and noticed that while it is booting, the C & D indicator light is amber.  A & B are green

While going through the POST process I would see the following:

Foreign configuration(s) found on adapter.  Press any key to continue, or 'C' to load the configuration utility

1 Logical Drive(s) found on the host adapter.

1 Logical Drive(s) Failed

1 Logical Drive(s) handled by BIOS

IPMI Server Management Configuration Utility 1.5

Baseboard Management Controller Revision 1.83  (There's more after that by I usually press ctrl+r

By pressing ctrl+r, the C and D light on the front remains amber, but I'm able to get into the Raid controller utility and see the virtual disk management.  If the amber C & D lights indicate a possible expansion card failure, how would I still be able to get into the RAID controller utility?

When I get into the Virtual Disk Management Utility, I see the following:IMG_8628.jpg   

Which indicates that drives 1 & 4 are bad because they are missing event though they are connected to the cable that connects to the RAID Controller and the virtual disk 0 is in red.  When I select Virtual Disk 0 it says it is Level 5 and offline.

IMG_8633.jpg

Does that mean that since there's a problem with the drives 1 and 4, that all data is now lost?

Here are the other pics from the menus.

IMG_8630.jpgIMG_8629.jpgIMG_8631.jpg

At this point, I don't know what to do.  I don't know much about RAID other than the data is spread through the drives.  I've been reading up on it and supposedly I can remove the bad drive and rebuild the RAID through import, but would it work with 2 drives? 

Thanks in advance for ANY assistance that can be provided!

6 Operator

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3K Posts

January 13th, 2022 19:00

4 LED on the front indicate boot sequence. LED C and D amber means "System resource configuration in progress." It is not a failure

You have 2 disks on the RAID 5 in foreign state which means virtual disk currently in failed state. RAID 5 can take only one disk failure without data lost. As the disks are in foreign state you can try import the foreign configuration and see whether that bring back the disk and make the virtual disk online. 

Sometime when disk failure happen disks will go to foreign state and when try to import it will move to failed state so I can not ensure that it will work. 

You can section "Importing or Clearing Foreign Configurations Using the Foreign Configuration View Screen" on page 65 of below link on steps to import foreign configuration

https://downloads.dell.com/manuals/all-products/esuprt_ser_stor_net/esuprt_dell_adapters/poweredge-rc-5i_user%27s%20guide_en-us.pdf 

15 Posts

January 18th, 2022 15:00

Thank you for your reply.  I will check the manual out and see if I can import.  Would my system still require 3 hard drives to be able to import for it to maintain the RAID 5 or the number of disks doesn't matter?  Since I only have 2 working drives would that mean my data is lost until I can put in a drive of the same size? Thanks!

6 Operator

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3K Posts

January 18th, 2022 18:00

Sorry. As you have 2 disk in RAID 5 is missing, virtual disk is failed state and in failed state we will not get the data back even if we replace drive of same size. You can go to foreign view tab and try to import the foreign configuration which might bring the disk back to virtual disk and virtual disk can come to online state. If that happen then you will get you data back. Please note there is a chance of disk getting to failed state when you try to import foreign configuration. 

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