On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 12:39 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > Dell PE-2550 whose RAID (PERC)
That's a PERC 3/Di, right? > 1. Can the battery be replaced (safely!) with the system still up and > running? Maybe. The manual should know for sure. As I recall, the battery for the 3/Di is in a cartridge on the side/top of the drive cage, and has leads to the motherboard from there. So you can get to it by just removing the system cover; no need to go digging. That said, myself, I wouldn't go fscking around with parts of my RAID card while a system was running. Seems like an unnecessary risk, even if the battery is easily accessible. > 2. If the system must be powered down to replace this battery, what if > anything is lost (configuration and other settings) while the system is both > powered down and the battery removed? The RAID battery isn't used for config data. It provides power to RAID cache RAM in the event of loss of power. That way you can have write cache enabled without worrying about it destroying the integrity of your journaled filesystems and databases. I would suggest disabling write caching on all RAID volumes (i.e., set to "write through") first, just to make sure the battery isn't protecting uncommitted writes before you pull the plug. Then turn same back on after replacement. > 3. Is this a fairly standard battery, or must I look for a source for > archaic Dell parts to get one? I don't know what "fairly standard" means to you, but as I recall it's a Ni-Cad or NiMH, with just two power leads. It's not a "smart" battery. Finding the form factor might be tricky, but you might be able to fit something else in there. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
