Hardware.... not for the feint hearted

Dell Powervault MX3100

Had to fit a replacement RAID battery on One of These Puppies.
5 minute job I hear you say? Well not really no.
The server has 20TB storage and the full timers have been avoiding running maintenance, so when the server hangs the process is.... Hard reboot and skip the chkdsk that the Win2k8 Storage Server wants to do. JOY OF JOYS. Just happens to be a key production server...what could go wrong?

Friday....Italy v Costa Rica and I really want to see the game....phone rings in the office, can you replace the RAID Batt tonight? Full Timer at his best...Aye OK.

Anyway time slips by time to do the job.

Shutdown the server, slip the lid off, replace the batt, replace the lid, power on....crap no keyboard response, it's wanting to start chkdsk...NNNAAWWW.

Pulled the power before it started.

This link served for some inspiration Legacy Mode but no, no option for that in the BIOS. 

My colleague says "gives an option to just have the back usb ports on" we tried it and it only just worked eh!!!! Relief or what!!! Server back up without the OS causing potential data loss with data corruption caused by a chkdsk. On a server with out a trusted backup or fail over server....#£$%^& sake!!

You could see the number lock key switch off during the initial boot, so always have that on and watch it, if it goes off when windows is loading you wont be able to bypass chkdsk. Pull out the mouse as well so that the system only has to sense the keyboard, the less devices connected via USB the better.

Dell 2950

Server was not responding to RDP. Got to the server room, no display just the black screen. Luckily the server was in warranty so take a note of the tag generate the express code, and call the Dell Support. They will need a DCET report so use Rufus and make sure you have atleast a 2GB USB stick. There are more instructions for Rufus in another post on the blog.

The bad news is the PERC or RAID Batt and a Disc may be FUBAR...

All the disc LEDs were green except for one disc and it's flashing alternately Green and Orange...predicted failure. Dell will talk you through the RAID card config and, when they are happy, they will ask for a reboot to the OS.

In this case, looks like a RAID Batt and a Disc caused the fault or perhaps there was another event...not sure.

All the utils you need are in this blog, just tough it out!!

MD300 connects to a MD1000 and then to two cluster servers

Strange storage cluster issues. One server reporting that it does not have the necessary information configured in the registry. It was missing SCSI Memory Buffers, well that was one of the several issues this cluster has...

IRPstacksize sets Mem Buffers for SCSI

What Architecture?

Having to build a specialized workstation today that controls a Digital SLR camera. The PC is a workstation with an Octa Processor core and 8GB ram. So 8 processors, 8GB ram two hard discs and all I have is a Win7 32-bit install disc.....NAW!!! It's not going to happen.

Found this out on the WWW and seems to describe things quite nicely without me rabbiting on...

Win7 32bit V 64bit 

List installed Drivers
CLI And Powershell commands to see what drivers the hardware is using.

Driver Query

List USB Devices
You may have to do some tweeking of the commands but this will get you in the ball park of querying USB devices. I've put my variation on the Powershell 2.0 post.

Display USB Devices 

Dell Service Tag Numbers and Express Codes

The Dell Support number I generally use from the UK is 0844 444 3844.
And you are in to the automated phone system that takes you through options and then asks for an express service code, a what? I hear you say!!! Well just make sure you have the tag number and convert it to the service code from this link...

Tag->Express Service Code Converter
Dell Tech Direct - Online Helpdesk
PowerVault MD3xxx range Mind and use the Dell Modular Disk Configuration Utility to carve up the discs on the ISCSI storage.

PCs & Workstations

HP

Z230 HP Workstation HP Support Page Z230

Printers

HP
p2055dn firmware update
HP2015dn Debug Flowchart

Servers

Dell PowerEdge
Usually Dell want a DCET report ran on the kit that is faulty, usually best to use a USB stick and config an ISO image so the server boots off of the USB stick.

A pretty comprehensive list of servers is covered by this DCET iso download so check the model number against the list first, then refer to my post about the Dell 2950 further up the page and the post about Burning ISOs...

Check this list for a DCET ISO download   used for a faulty 2950, 1950

R720
Dell R720 RAID 5 Config training Video
R720 Support Page

Disc Storage Trays

Dell
Dell MD3000 Support Page  Graceful shutdown MD3000
Powervault-MD3260i Deployment Guide

Video Grabber Cards

Silicon Graphics
Digital imaging software and drivers