C6100 - Performing power action failed. Please check The feature connector cables.

[Puppetfreek]

Hi,

Long time lurker - as many other people here have been. Bought 2 C6100 XS23-TY3 servers ~1 year ago. Everything has been working fine, until after a power outage. Two of the nodes (one of each server) failes to start. First time I tried, I heard some peeping sound, and now it seems like I'm unable to boot the nodes up.

The led doesn't lit, but the hard drives led does. There is no post or anything, but IMPI works. When trying to boot the node from IMPI I get the following message:

"Performing power action failed. Please check The feature connector cables.".

There is nothing in:

* BMC Generated Events
* BIOS Generated Events
* SMI Handler
* FCB Generated Events
* System Management Software Events
* Unknown

I have tried removing most of the ram from the node, without any success in getting it to start. Also tried removing the bios battery for a couple of hours, but it didn't work either.

Anyone have any idea(s)?

Thanks,
Mathias

 

[ethaniel86]

Hi Mathias

I'm facing the same. Did you find a way to resolve it?

 

[MiniKnight]

@Puppetfreek and @ethaniel86 Did you upgrade IPMI firmware to the newest version?

I think I remember having this 2 yrs ago and the fix was firmware for me.

 

[ethaniel86]

Hi MiniKnight

Do you have the link to download c6100 firmware? So i will be using IPMI interface to upgrade firmware?

 

[Biren78]

iirc you can google search. Dell has a page with the XS23-TY3 BIOS and firmware all in one place.

 

[mcalame]

did you resolve the problem, I have 9 motherboards with the same problem.....

 

[jaymemaurice]

I have 4 like this... about to make them into a coffee table...

 

[theooze]

I have 4 like this... about to make them into a coffee table...

I have a few nodes like this as well - both w/ the 1.71 BIOS and 1.33 BMC firmware and older bios/megarac bmc firmware.

i've tried switching out CPUs and memory from working systems w/ no change.

the node sleds are around $40 on ebay so it's not terrible to replace them but this has happened randomly on a couple nodes during operation so it's quite annoying. does the error reference actual cables that can be replaced ? i don't find much on google other than this thread.

 

[Puppetfreek]

sorry for the late reply here. I ended up getting replacements. Of my 8 nodes, I think I've replaced around half of them so far. Seems to be happening randomly, so not sure what causes this. Perhaps, they were not built with the best of quality.

 

[theooze]

It's too bad because it's a great use of space. I'm probably switching over to the r610 since those aren't too expensive.