Battery life/status check on blades

[chuckk281]

Victor wanted a good method to do an older generation blade battery check:

***********

Hi all,

Does anyone know if there is a way to check BL480 Generation 1 battery life/status? I’m referring to CMOS/BIOS battery.

The operating systems installed are SUSE 10 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.

Ideally we prefer to check it in online. If it’s not possible, we can do it offline with some tool.

************

Input from Norman:

Maintenance and Service Guide (MSG) for the ProLiant BL460c (G1) server does not indicate a remote method to test the battery life.

If the server blade no longer automatically displays the correct date and time, you may need to replace

the battery that provides power to the real-time clock. Under normal use, battery life is 5 to 10 years.

If in doubt or to address a potential issue, then replace the battery. The cost is cheap enough.

Note that the battery is only used for system clock at startup, whereas all other system settings are stored in NVRAM via the RBSU.

On a related note, I have always been curious of the value of the battery, where today’s operating systems can reach out to NTP servers to validate and update their internal clock. About the only thing that would be relevant would be associated pre-OS events stored within diagnostic logs (e.g. IML, ILO, AHS, etc.) for accurate corrolation.

And input from Eirik:

I have to say I have never replaced a battery on a HP server, the last 7 years, last time I remember replacing a battery was sometime in the mid 90s too.. wouldn’t be my biggest concern, I would be more worries about customers running wrong clock on their OAs and the reseating Domain Controllers in the enclosure.. (had a customer do this, AD was messed up for hours until we figured out what it was..)

***************

Other comments?