Server problem

[XenosTech]

So today was the first day at my new job in a small server company and my first task was to diagnose a problem with 2 Dell PowerEdge 1750 servers. They wouldn't put out any video at all, and the beeps go 1-3-2 or 1-4-2 (Can't really tell the fans in the servers drown out the beeps but I looked them up and got 2 problems one being related to the video memory and the other being related to the RAM. Anyone else have any other possible diagnosis for these beeps ? I can't really can't test the ram issue since the client only sent 1 stick of ram with their servers and we don't have any ram that's specked for that server lying around.

[SageOfSpice]

If you can't take out the rams, then why not take out the videos?

[XenosTech]

because most people don't put video cards in their servers

[SageOfSpice]

Put the rams in another servers?

[brwainer]

Is testing this type of server sent in by others a regular thing this company does? If so they should invest in multiple sets of test memory, CPUs, etc that are known good and can be used to test servers that come in.

[XenosTech]

@brwainer Server repair isn't part of what we do for customers, we're just doing this as a favour for a customer to find out what the problem was.

[brwainer]

9 hours ago, XenosTech said:

@brwainer Server repair isn't part of what we do for customers, we're just doing this as a favour for a customer to find out what the problem was.

I definitely understand taking on little projects for customer appreciation, but it sounds like you're not prepared for this type of hardware troubleshooting. I hope you can figure out the culprit.

[dalekphalm]

On 2016-07-21 at 0:29 PM, XenosTech said:

@brwainer Server repair isn't part of what we do for customers, we're just doing this as a favour for a customer to find out what the problem was.

I assume the server is out of warranty?

 

Basically, you gotta test those RAM sticks. Take a known good stick of RAM from another server, if possible, and put it into the servers in question, see if they boot.

 

Otherwise, take all the RAM out and try them one by one.

[groupmsl]

Did this server ever work? If not then check the RAM is compatible with the motherboard and CPU - I've had an issue like this before.

 

If the server used to work then this is irrelevant...ignore me!

[XenosTech]

Tried ram from 2 other servers but they didn't work... our servers use pc 2700 and that uses pc 2100... Just waiting til the customer brings some more ram

[harry4742]

the server might be accessible through the iDRAC interface, you can connect to that remotely and it might show you the problem

[XenosTech]

Doesn't the server need to be able to boot up to be seen on iDRAC ?

[dalekphalm]

8 minutes ago, XenosTech said:

Doesn't the server need to be able to boot up to be seen on iDRAC ?

iDRAC could still show POST errors - but then, so would a monitor plugged into them.

 

AFAIK, iDRAC won't help anymore than a monitor would. But I could be mistaken. I don't use iDRAC at all in my job.

[brwainer]

iDRAC AFAIK is similar to other IPMI systems, in that it is a seperate SoC on the motherboard that runs independantly of the main system - all it requires is power. I know the HP versio, iLo, can show you things like what RAM is inserted in each slot and other things like that. It depends on the version of firmware the iDRAC is running. And I think there are functions that require you to pay for a license to use, like iKVM. But give it a shot regardless.

[XenosTech]

would have to see if we have iDRAC setup here and see... But I tried new memory in the server today and still got the same beep error

[brwainer]

8 hours ago, XenosTech said:

would have to see if we have iDRAC setup here and see... But I tried new memory in the server today and still got the same beep error

Yeah it's going to depend on if and how the client company set it up - it will be using whatever network config it needed for their network. And if they have never changed things like the default password, that's a huge security hole, giving anyone on the network basically physical access.

[dalekphalm]

9 hours ago, brwainer said:

Yeah it's going to depend on if and how the client company set it up - it will be using whatever network config it needed for their network. And if they have never changed things like the default password, that's a huge security hole, giving anyone on the network basically physical access.

That's if the original owners of the server even bothered to configure it. I suppose in that case, it would be on default settings - perhaps configured for DHCP?

[XenosTech]

Servers were donated to the client and they sent the servers to us to originally configure pfsense but the servers wouldn't bout for us to do a 15 min job and get them back out... been in out repair room for about 3 weeks going 4 now. And to make it worse they went and bought ECC memory that specific for HP servers .-.