HP PROLIANT ML350 not booting

[slash8]

Hi,

My HPE ML350 Windows Server 2012 R2 suddenly doesn't boot. It boots up to the HPE screen and it either gets stuck there or it automatically restarts. The health LED screen blinks with the amber color which according to the manual means it is degraded. I use the Diagnostic Tests and found that the storage battery is for replacement. I checked it however with a voltmeter and it is still charging fine and I doubt that this will cause the not booting up issue right? All the other components' tests are fine. But I am suspecting the hard drives. All the hard drive tests including the quick and short dst test are all fine while the long dst test which takes up upto 7 hours doesn't finish even in 9 hours so I left it. Logs show that all drives are healthy however I also saw that my Logical Drive (01) is degraded (rebuilding). System health also shows that my drive array is resuming "Automatic Data Recovery (Rebuild) process and that no action is required". I am on RAID6 with Smart Array P440ar Controller. While I have lots of experience in repairing PC's, I have little experience with Servers and RAIDs, So my question is what further steps can I make to further troubleshoot the drive arrays. And could it be the one causing the issue even if it logs show all are healthy? Also does the automatic rebuilding happen even if the Server doesn't boot to Windows. Thank you! 

[Bunsol]

Hi Slash,

If the server does not complete post then you will have to try minimum configuration. If you mean that post completes and it does not boot to the Operating system because of the Logical drive in re-building status. then we have to check why the logical drive is re-building.  It could be possible that the drives had a disconnection from the backplane/expander causing a timeout which has led to this issue. If the server is not completing Post then if you are comfortable then try minimum configuration but if the server is completing Post and not booting then request you to log a support ticket with us as the logs needs to be checked to understand why this occured. At this point without checking the logs we cannot say if the server will boot to windows after rebuilding is complete and if there is an issue with one of the components.

Please use the following link to log a support ticket:-

https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/home

Regards,

Bunsol