ProLiant DL380 G5 dual power supplies and Win2K

[NJK-Work]

Hello,

I have a DL380 G5 running Windows 2000 (SP4) with dual power supplies. If I unplug one of the power supplies, the whole server shuts down (hard). Now this seems quite odd to me considering the whole purpose of dual power supplies is if one fails, the server keeps running.

The one thing about this server is that is used to be a DL380 G1. I use HP P2P software to migrate it to a DL380 G5. So I am wondering if there is some HP agent or service that is missing that handles dual powers supplies. Or, does Windows 2000 simply not handle dual power supplies properly?

Anybody know what I might be missing here? This seems like a simple concept, so I must be missing something.

Thanks
Nelson

[Mauro Rusignuolo]

the documentation I found it's not so clear.
it seems that the 2 power suplies shoul function as redundant or concurrent.

how many wattw are each one?

try to determine the exact need of your system with an ampherometric plier or using the power calculator you can find here:

http://h30099.www3.hp.com/configurator/powercalcs.asp.

let me know.

I'm curious ...

bye.

TJK

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi Nelson,

I wouldn't have thought any software would control the power supplies.

When you say the server "shuts down (hard)" do you mean it just powers off or does the OS actually shut down ?

If the latter then it could be a software issue of some kind, however I'd be more inclined to suspect a hardware fault of some kind.

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Rob

[NJK-Work]

Hi,

Thanks for the the replies. The server originally had 1 power supply and worked fine. We added a second PS after a rash of PS failures we had with the DL380 G5. So I don't this this is an issue of requiring too much power and it shutting down when one is pulled.

Additionally, when I say "whole server shuts down (hard)", I don't mean a OS shutdown. I mean the system just powers off, not gracefully.

Thanks
Nelson

[Kim Beveridge]

Hi there.

I have had exactly same issue on DL380 G5 runnig linux. Server was running with dual power supplies and tested originally to fail over between the 2 power supplies.

But one of the power supplies has failed and server switched off abruptly and now will not power up at all.

Has anyone got any resolution or idea on this?

thanks
Kim

[KennyLogsdon]

The redundant power supplies on the G5 are OS independent other than some of the status and health reporting they do via the mibs. The G5 uses a 1000 watt power supply. When two are installed, no intervention is needed to make them redundant, that will be automatic. Also, it may be interesting to know that when a server is using dual PS, they will draw about 1 amp each (maybe higher during startup). I rigged a spare power cord with a ammeter to measure this first hand. My test server had dual procs, three hard drives and 4 sticks of ram and BBWC installed. My ammeter showed 0.9 amps. Greater current draw may be seen with more drives installed or other add-ons (i.e. pci cards, etc). when I removed the power cord from one power supply to mimic a power failure, the current draw on the remaining power supply doubled exactly to 1.8 amps. I did this experiment to help determine how much power run into a server cabinet. My point: On a dual power supply setup on the G5 or G4, each power supply assumes half the load until one fails an then the second instantaneously picks up the additional load. With all that said... I would bet that your problems are hardware related and I would start with swapping the power supply with a spare if you have one and testing again, or replacing it. It should work as you have tested it. Sorry to be so windy.