iDRAC 9 not coming up on first boot/after being put on power

Question

We have a bunch of R740xd's that when the rack PDUs are put on power either for the first time or being reattached to the whips in our datacenter, the iDRAC in the nodes never come up (LED off). We consistently have 4-7 nodes per rack that we have to unplug the PSU's and fully drain by holding the power button in order for the iDRAC to initialize. What is causing this? Is it a symptom of how they are taken off power or put on that is causing them to crash/fail?

Daniel My · Answer

Hello Please send a private message with your service tag to ensure we have all appropriate information on your system. Thanks

ryanbwn · Answer

Hi Daniel, I sent you a PM with more information.

Daniel My · Answer

Thank you for the service tag.

The behavior you describe is normal if the systems are powered on as soon as power is attached. If power is disconnected from the system then you should wait 1-2 minutes after connecting power to allow the iDRAC to boot up. If the system is started too fast after power is applied then the iDRAC can fail initialization.

I suggest adding a delay in your startup.

Thanks

ryanbwn · Answer

Does this include boots initiated by the auto-on (I think it's called AC Power Recovery) feature of these servers? The servers seem to boot automatically when first put on power so it's somewhat unavoidable if so.

Daniel My · Answer

@ryanbwn wrote:

Does this include boots initiated by the auto-on (I think it's called AC Power Recovery) feature of these servers?

Yes.

If your UPS or other power device supports power recovery tasks then you can disable the automatic recovery in the system BIOS and set the UPS to send a power on command after a delay. How it would be implemented would depend on what, if any, methods your power device supports.

Thanks

PowerEdge Hardware General

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