Hi all - I am bringing up some new 1U servers, running FreeBSD 6.1, that have 3Ware 9550SX RAID controllers. These controllers have battery backup mounted on the card. I'm relatively new to system administration on this scale and have a couple of questions about whether my experience here is typical for 1U machines with cards like these:
1. Yesterday we got syslog warnings that the battery temperature was too high. The 3ware cards mount to the mainboard by means of a daughtercard, and the construction of the cards means that the Battery Backup Unit is mounted on the underside of the 3ware card. That puts the battery between the controller card and the motherboard. The 3ware manual recommends against installing a PCI card next to the battery because it restricts airflow. However, I can't figure out any way to install this controller in a 1U box without sandwiching the battery between the controller and the mainboard. Has anyone had experience with 3ware controllers with battery backup in 1U boxes? Is this fundamentally an unwise idea or is it worrying about nothing? 2. Yesterday before leaving work I ran a battery capacity test (by running tw_cli and entering "/c0/u0 bbu test"). The test completed without any apparent incident, but immediately afterward we received a couple hundred of these messages in syslog: Jun 28 06:44:50 kernel: twa0: WARNING: (0x04: 0x0045): Battery voltage is low: Jun 28 06:44:50 kernel: twa0: ERROR: (0x04: 0x0047): Battery voltage is too low: followed by a couple hundred of these: Jun 28 06:45:22 kernel: twa0: WARNING: (0x04: 0x0045): Battery voltage is low: Jun 28 06:45:22 kernel: twa0: INFO: (0x04: 0x0044): Battery voltage is normal: The 3ware manual (http://www.3ware.com/support/UserDocs/3ware9590SEUsrGuide.pdf) says that because a battery capacity test involves completely discharging the battery and then completely recharging it, the controller will report a low battery voltage during the course of the test and will return to normal status. So I am guessing that these messages were generated over the 12 hours of the test and were cached somewhere (by syslog? by the controller?) before being written to disk, which is why they all appeared in a big clump at the end. Does that sound right, or should I be concerned about the battery misbehaving? Thanks in advance, --twp _______________________________________________ bblisa mailing list [email protected] http://www.bblisa.org/mailman/listinfo/bblisa
