PowerEdge R410 ERROR: Preferred boot device is missing
We have an older R410 server that has been used as a file archive and we have had no issue with it until this week it rebooted and when it tried coming up, it said this:
ERROR: Preferred boot device is missing, reconfiguration is suggested!
It looks like whatever is housing your OS, or some component in the chain, has failed. The virtual disk may have failed, something on the backplane may be preventing drive communication, or the storage controller may not be working properly.
If you watch the server run through POST, it should at least tell you if the PERC and the virtual disks seem to be working properly or not. Depending on what controller you have, you'll get a prompt to use the configuration tool, as well.
Around the 1:02 mark, it shows your storage controller, the 6Gbps SAS controller, and provides a Control + C prompt to get view the configuration utility. I would go in there and see what the controller is picking up (or not picking up).
SAS topology should show you your drives, RAID properties, if I recall correctly, should show you all your RAID specific information. I linked to the manual for the controller below.
Then I would begin trying to determine why the controller isn't seeing your drives. If the drives are visible from the outside of the server, you could check for any amber LEDs to indicate drive failures, but I'd be looking at the backplane, cables, and controller since the drives communicate through those.
You might look at testing these drives in another server, or another drive in this one to try to begin fault isolation.
Not to any sufficient degree to me. I'll say that I'm highly suspicious of the backplane because I would expect power LEDs to at least light up. You can try reseating the drives and backplane cables to see if the reconnection helps.
In order to make any firm statement though, we really need to either test components in another system, or known good components in this one. Without that, you can end up swapping excess parts. On the other hand, you can probably also find used backplanes, cables, and controllers pretty inexpensively, should it come down to that.
Dell-DylanJ
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Posted April 3rd, 2020 15:00
It looks like whatever is housing your OS, or some component in the chain, has failed. The virtual disk may have failed, something on the backplane may be preventing drive communication, or the storage controller may not be working properly.
If you watch the server run through POST, it should at least tell you if the PERC and the virtual disks seem to be working properly or not. Depending on what controller you have, you'll get a prompt to use the configuration tool, as well.