Accelerator Board Battery Failed on 5300 Controller

[Torgeir Leirbakken]

The controller has the 3.54B firmware version.
I have had this on a different server, then an upgrade worked. But this server has the latest version.
Anyone who can help me with this?

Below is the errormessage from HP SIM:


Accelerator Board Battery Failed. This trap signifies that the agent has detected a battery failure associated with the array accelerator cache board. User Action: Replace the Accelerator Cache Board.

An administratively-assigned name for this managed node. By convention, this is the node``s fully-qualified domain name. PHDKCH-S3002
The Trap Flags. This is a collection of flags used during trap delivery. Each bit has the following meaning: Bit 5-31: RESERVED: Always 0. Bit 2-4: Trap Condition 0= Not used (for backward compatibility) 1= Condition unknown or N/A 2= Condition ok 3= Condition degraded 4= Condition failed 5-7= reserved Bit 1: Client IP address type 0= static entry 1= DHCP entry Bit 0: Agent Type 0= Server 1= Client NOTE: bit 31 is the most significant bit, bit 0 is the least significant. 0
A text description of the hardware location of the controller. A NULL string indicates that the hardware location could not be determined or is irrelevant. Slot 3
Array Controller Model. The type of controller card. The valid types are: Other (1) You may need to upgrade your driver software and\or instrument agent(s). You have a drive array controller in the system that the instrument agent does not recognize. IDA (2) Compaq 32-Bit Intelligent Drive Array Controller. The physical drives are located inside the system. IDA Expansion (3) Compaq 32-Bit Intelligent Drive Array Expansion Controller. The physical drives are located in the Array Expansion System that is connected to the system by a cable. IDA - 2 (4) Compaq Intelligent Drive Array Controller-2 (IDA-2). The physical drives are located inside the system. SMART (5) Compaq SMART Array Controller. The physical drives can be located inside the system or outside the system in a ProLiant Storage System that is connected to the system by a cable. SMART - 2/E (6) Compaq SMART-2/E Array Controller. The physical drives can be located inside the system or outside the system in a ProLiant Storage System that is connected to the system by a cable. SMART - 2/P (7) Compaq SMART-2/P Array Controller. The physical drives can be located inside the system or outside the system in a ProLiant Storage System that is connected to the system by a cable. SMART - 2SL (8) Compaq SMART-2SL Array Controller. The physical drives can be located inside the system or outside the system in a ProLiant Storage System that is connected to the system by a cable. Smart - 3100ES (9) Compaq Smart Array 3100ES Controller. The physical drives are located inside the system. Smart - 3200 (10) Compaq Smart Array 3200 Controller. The physical drives can be located inside the system or outside the system in a ProLiant Storage System that is connected to the system by a cable. SMART - 2DH (11) Compaq SMART-2DH Array Controller. The physical drives can be located inside the system or outside the system in a ProLiant Storage System that is connected to the system by a cable. Smart - 221 (12) Compaq Smart Array 221 Controller. The physical drives can be located inside the system or outside the system in a ProLiant Storage System that is connected to the system by a cable. Smart Array 4250ES (13) Compaq Smart Array 4250ES Controller. The physical drives are located inside the system. Smart Array 4200 (14) Compaq Smart Array 4200 Controller. The physical drives can be located inside the system or outside the system in a ProLiant Storage System that is connected to the system by a cable. Integrated Smart Array (15) Compaq Integrated Smart Array Controller. The physical drives can be located inside the system or outside the system in a ProLiant Storage System that is connected to the system by a cable. Smart Array 431 (16) Compaq Smart Array 431 Controller. The physical drives can be located inside the system or outside the system in a ProLiant Storage System that is connected to the system by a cable. Smart Array 5300 (17) HP Smart Array 5300 Controller. RAID LC2 Controller (18) Compaq RAID LC2 Controller. Smart Array 5i (19) HP Smart Array 5i Controller. Smart Array 532 (20) Compaq Smart Array 532 Controller. Smart Array 5312 (21) Compaq Smart Array 5312 Controller. Smart Array 641 (22) HP Smart Array 641 Controller. Smart Array 642 (23) HP Smart Array 642 Controller. Smart Array 6400 (24) HP Smart Array 6400 Controller. Smart Array 6400 EM (25) HP Smart Array 6400 EM Controller. Smart Array 6i (26) HP Smart Array 6i Controller. Generic Array (27) Array Controller. Reserved (28) Smart Array P600 (29) HP Smart Array P600 Controller. sa-5300

Array Accelerator Board Controller Index. This value is a logical number whose meaning is OS dependent. The value has a direct mapping to the controller table index such that controller ``i`` has accelerator table entry ``i``. 3
Array Accelerator Serial Number. The serial number of the Array Accelerator. This field will be a null (size 0) string if the accelerator does not support serial number.
Total Cache Memory. This value is the total amount of accelerator memory in kilobytes, including both battery-backed and non-battery-backed memory.

[Prashant (I am Back)]

Hi,

following steps to clear the cache memory:

Power down the server.
Remove the controller board.
Remove both battery packs.
Wait at least 60 seconds, then re-install the battery packs and controller board.
Power on the server.

Then check again.

Regards,
Prashant s.

[Andy_180]

Actually, you need to replace the batts. ask me how i know... if you have a 5300 series chances are its 3yrs old or better. you'll need to order 2 new battery packs and replace the right and left side. (there are two on the cache module). hp part surfer can look up the part numbers for you. they're about 75 bucks each side. if SIM is giving you e-mails about it every 25 minutes, disable "array acceleration" and the erors will go away but the problem will remain. thanks.
--Andy

[leo_61]

Hi Torgeir Leirbakken,
Have you tried the suggestions posted? Are you still having problems with this? We have a server that is having the same problem. Thanks.

[Jason Cecchin]

I have seen this problem before. I had a Smart Array 5300 controller which was really being a pain in the ass.

The first problem was it reported the cache battery had failed to charge and needed replacement. Second problem which occurred later was in the system POST it was not detecting the controller and starting up.

Well I figured I needed new batteries but I thought just to be sure I would check their voltage with a multimeter. Sure enough a 4.8v battery was reading 5.6v and both Left and Right looked fine at around the same amount. I figured this was very strange for a battery which failed to charge as they normally short circuit or open circuit. ie. they read a lower than usual voltage by over a volt (depends how many cells but often 1.2v) or 0v (open circuit). Problem is these batteries looked fine.

Now comes for the disclaimer!!!! I don't know if I would do this again if it were in a production environment but it wasn't so I figured what the hell.

Basically I found a nice little 150ma 5v fan which I just happened to have lying around and hooked it up to one of the batteries. Sure enough it ran quite happily for 6 hrs. (dead battery yeh right....) You could tell when the battery was discharging as the fan would go slower - it was quite a neat idea. Just be careful if you try this. My fan had a startup voltage of around 3.5v which is important because if you discharge a NiMH battery too much you can damage it. Of course it stopped before it got too low as there was not enough voltage. Also be carefull to use a low wattage fan as if the drain is too heavy you can also damage the battery.

Did this for both batteries and then attached to the controller. The controller now reported the batteries were flat and it would charge them. Sure enough it did and they have worked correctly ever since. Oh and the second problem just disappeared. Good but it worries me. Hopefully it was just a BIOS bug or issue with the charging which fowled up the start.

Now why... I hear you ask. Well its simple. Some how the controller figured the battery was flat when it was actually fully charged. Thing is I don't know why but we did do a fair bit of powering on/and off with this server over a couple of weeks while testing some stuff so maybe that caused it.

Well there you go. If I were in a production critical environemnt I don't know if I would do this. Might be easier just to get some new batteries.... Maybe I was just lucky. But then again would new batteries have fixed it???

Oh and BTW I tried removing batteries from cache for 20mins and re-attaching them too and this sort of helped (partly where I got idea from) but the problem returned within a couple of hours. Moral of the story - don't power off your server all the time!!!