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SirOracle
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Host battery status alarm

Hi,

I have installed ESXi4 on some servers and they all come up with an alarm in vCenter:

Status: Warning

Name: Host battery status

These are all Dell PowerEdge 2950 servers. Does anyone know what this alarm means? Could this be a bug and should I disable this alarm?

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J1mbo
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It is annoying but[/b] as said above the learn cycle is only once every 3 months (and takes about 3 days to complete). The learn cycle is required for the controller to genuinely report when the lithium ion cell is too worn, and at this point you absolutely need to know about that if you are using local storage, since the Perc will drop to write-through mode and parity based RAID write performance will take a massive hit as a result.

But I agree vSphere should differentiate between learning mode and real failure.

Please award points to any useful answer.

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umarzuki
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this is happening on x3650m2 running esx 4.0 update 1 and vcenter 4

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Hi5
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Hi,

We have 2 Dell PE R710 and 2 PE 2950 with ESX 4.0 U2.

We have been having the same problem for years. We just ignored battery status alarms.

Recently we had a problem with air conditioning in the server room and temperature was about 35 degrees C for about 24 hours.

However when I went to the Hardware status tab on each ESX server the System Board Ambient Temp was 25 degrees. On the top right corner it was showing that status was updated 5 days ago. When I hit Update it changed to 40 degrees.

It looks like it goes to sleep mode sometimes and just do not update data until you do it manually. It makes hardware status alarms unreliable for us.

Did you guys find any solutions?

Thanks

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estereterete
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I'm having this two warnings:

in HP BL465 G5 since I updated from ESX 4.1 to hp Esxi 4.1 https://h20392.www2.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=HPVM06

This warning never gets back to green.  I though it was ESXi, so I hoped it would stop after installing HP ESXi image. Sadly, I still have the same problem.

Did somebody solve this?

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J1mbo
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Most likely the battery is bad.  Check your hardware IPMI logs or similar.

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peetz
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Maybe you are experiencing the issue described here:

vCenter Server Hardware Status shows the battery status of RAID controllers as failed or in question

Andreas

- check out my VMware Front Experience Blog

Twitter: @VFrontDe, @ESXiPatches | https://esxi-patches.v-front.de | https://vibsdepot.v-front.de
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estereterete
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Yeah, that's my issue http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=102178...

I've had 3 servers working fine for months with ESX4.1 The moment I upgraded them to ESXi 4.1, this alarm started raising..

I've checked, as well, that this alarm is only triggered if esxi has v.m. running. I don't see any relationship, but it's happening from the beginning.

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FranciscoBatist
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Well guys i'm getting these anoying Host Battery Status Alams on 2 IBM x3650 M3 installed with VMware ESXi 4.1.0 build 381591.

Everything is up to date, and the hardware is fine. In the past i had a similar issue on ESX 3.5 with another IBM machine, that was only solved when we upgraded to ESX4, by the time, i even got confirmation from VMware that this was a know issue that was going to be corrected in future releases.

For me this is the same problem, VMware monitoring for this machine is probably misinterpreting the data gathered.

Any ideas? Anyone with similar issues? Anyone heard from VMware that it's a know issue?

I will open a problem with IBm, but after asking me if everything is upto date (VMware and Firmwares) thay will tell me to speak with VMware.

Best regards.

Will get to you soon.

Francisco Batista - VCP 3 & 4 - VSP - VTSP

Softinsa - Portugal

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JohnnyLeung
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Hi Guys

I also have similar problem. I am using IBM X3650 M3 server with esxi 4.1 update1.

We received twice battery warning message within 2 days.

We have verified that there is no error message on the physical server. But keep receiving this warning. Could someone help me to solve this issue, many thanks.

Johnny

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nlandas
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    This is likely an informative message and under the hardware tab there are more details. However, keep in mind that at least on the DELL PE2950, DELL recommends replacing those PERC Raid batteries every three years. You can argue that this is too frequently but if the server is off it's initial 3 year warranty, maybe it is time to replace that PERC battery. It is an important part of the system.

    Now the alarms should not be on a long time if the battery is simply charging/testing/learning/etc. so as others said on the thread this looks like a bug with certain versions and patch levels of ESXi but still woth looking at the age of the battery and recommended replacement cycle.

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J1mbo
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As of build 502767 (and possibly before) the learn cycle is correctly reported at least for Perc-6i controllers, "Battery on Controller 0 Discharging ... (Learn Cycle Active)"

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Nilopher25
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Even I face the same error with my organization's esx servers ... but disabling the alarm is not the only solution .... what if I really want to monitor the battery status and after disabling the alarm , obviously it won't be possible .... Any suggestions or alternatives ???

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FranciscoBatist
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Upgrading to esxi 5 solved the alarm anoying problem for my costumers.

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SkyGuide
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I had the same issue in my data center. Old Dell PowerEdge 1950 servers started to generate this alarm.

Only the servers with a separate dedicated battery to for RAID controller where generating this alarm.

So in my case this was NOT a ghost alarm, it was very real.

The battery in question is connected to the RAID controller to keep the memory modules alive for RAID while its moving data back and forth between the drives.

This batteries do have a finite life span and eventually they do stop charging.

The PE 1950 without the separate RAID card installed (and no separate battery) did not had this issue. All my PE1950 where made in the same year.

SOLUTION... in my case was to buy the new battery, shut the host down, replace the battery, restart the host, Acknowledge the alarm, reset it, and that's it.

Once I replaced the battery in two of my old PE1950 - alarms stopped.

Hope this helped.

The Battery you want to replace sitting next to the RAID card in the left corner of the server (PE 1950) close to the front panel, near by the power button. Battery kind of large, inclosed in the black plastic, resembling old fat cell phone batteries.

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JohnnyLeung
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Hello guys

Now I have similar problem again "Battery on Controller 0 (Learn Cycle Requested)" for more than 36 hours, I have tried to reboot the server several times, but it does not help.

IBM has confirmed that the battery does not need a replacement, but its in Learn Cycle Requested, anyone knows how long will it take for a learn cycle, and how to determine if the warning message is fake or not and how to get rid of it?

Thanks a lot for your help.

2014-03-04_110005.jpg

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