Poweredge server help

radio · 1 Feb 2007 at 19:07

Firstly I know very little about servers and raid etc.

I have a very old dell 6450.

It has been fine since 2000, but today it won't boot up.

It just says "No boot device available - strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility", where before it would go through some PERC2 RAID stuff and then boot.

I have 3 hard drives using the PERC2 RAID controller, and they all have a green light.

If anyone could offer some advice, as I really have no idea what I'm doing.

oldbag · 1 Feb 2007 at 19:16

You get nothing mentioned about the RAID card on the screen? Have you opened up the case to see if the card is fully in the slot?

matja · 1 Feb 2007 at 19:23

On the PERC cards at work, sometimes if the raid configuration changes, you have to go into the BIOS and set which logical drive (raid array) which you want to boot from, just having the PERC card in the BIOS boot order isn't enough. Check that, and check that the array is 'online' in the PERC BIOS.

radio · 1 Feb 2007 at 19:31

Thanks for the help.

The bios does not mention raid, and lists no hard drives.

When it boots it usually talks about the perc 2 like this:

But now it does not.

matja · 1 Feb 2007 at 19:55

You could try poking arround the BIOS for "int 19h hook/capture" and turning it on... I'm grasping at straws now, sorry.

rpstewart · 1 Feb 2007 at 20:20

The line that says "0 Logical Drives found" is the key here. The RAID card doesn't think there are any arrays defined and hence it has nothing to boot from.

Now I've not used a PERC card but if it's anything like IBM kit there will be an option somewhere in the RAID BIOS to tell the card to read the array config from the disks rather than from its onboard NVRAM. Hopefully doing this will persuade the card to recognise the existing disks and all should be back to normal.

radio · 1 Feb 2007 at 20:56

The picture above was just to show what it normally says regarding the perc raid card.

Now, it skips all the raid stuff and just goes straight to "no boot devices available".

rpstewart · 1 Feb 2007 at 20:58

So you now don't get any messages on the screen between the American Megatrends line and the Press F1 message?

radio · 1 Feb 2007 at 21:19

No. It worked fine for 6 years and now when it boots the bios has no mention of the perc card, just the onboard scsi. It can't find the a boot device because it is not picking up the prec controller.

If my perc2/dc has gone, I'm screwed.

radio · 1 Feb 2007 at 22:11

Problem solved.

I swapped it with another pci slot and now it works. For some reason it just won't work with the pci slot it was in for so many years.

This is such a huge relief for me. I run a not for profit educational website, and this would have been the death of it.

I would like that thank those who helped me above: thank you so much.