Dell PERC5/i battery backed cache is a pain

I

idea

Gawd
Joined
Jan 24, 2005
Messages
615
Everyone rants and raves about the bang for the buck on these adapters. It's like buying a used luxury car: the maintenance cost is what gets you.

So, I got a good deal on two of these including the BBU w/ cables and 512MB ECC DIMM upgrade. There was no guarantee on the BBUs. Surprise!!! The BBUs were both DOA. The BIOS reports that the battery is not attached/not taking a charge. A very common story according to my google findings.

A used BBU costs $50, half the cost of the card, and who knows how long it will last after that. The only way I can tell if it's dead is because the Write Back is disabled which severely affects the adapter's read/write performance. The BIOS doesn't have any battery info. If I really wanted to view the battery's status I'd have to use LSI's Windows software. Guess what, I don't run Windows.

Lots of people just force the "enable the Write Back without BBU" but to me that is suicide. You're just asking for data corruption. And as I said earlier, running the card without Write Through enabled (opposite of Write Back) is ridiculously slow.

As far as I can tell these are my options:
- Enable "Write Back without BBU" (dangerous)
- Enable "Write Through" (slower than slow)
- Buy a used battery at $50/each every time mine dies
- Buy a different 8x SAS adapter that supports RAID1/0/10/5, at least $200-300 each card. Performance will probably be worse than the PERC5 unless it also has a battery backed cache, but at least it will be stable and safe to be left alone for years to come.
 
Megacli command line tool has releases for: dos, windows, linux, solaris, netware, freebsd.

The megaraid storage manager is a java based gui that has releases for (at least): Linux, Solaris, Windows.
 
Netwerkz101 said:
Batteries go bad no matter what controller you get (if it has BBU).

$50 new at Dell Small Business
If you google, $35-45 new.

Check out the MaxIQ adapter at Adaptec 5805ZQ ... no BBU!!
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Just bite the bullet and pay the $50/each, eh? Even with that, no other card comes close to the value. Then I have to pray that it really is the battery and not a bad cable ($20) or dare I say it, the connector on the card itself.
 
idea said:
Just bite the bullet and pay the $50/each, eh? Even with that, no other card comes close to the value. Then I have to pray that it really is the battery and not a bad cable ($20) or dare I say it, the connector on the card itself.
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Make sure the card is in a powered on system for a while (to charge), before you decide that it is bad. Then use megacli or MSM to view the battery status.

Check the firmware version on the card too.. If I remember correctly, very early firmware versions would "expire" the battery after two or three years.
 
I installed Windows on a spare drive and installed MSM. I installed two PERC5/i cards each with cable and battery, and MSM did not recognize that they were even connected. I then swapped each cable and battery just for testing. Same result.

I've pretty much accepted the fact that I have to get a new battery but I'm not in a rush. So the past couple of weeks I was just checking eBay once in a while to try and find a deal. That's when this popped up out of nowhere:

CS-RAD8483SL.jpg

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=370412377690&ssPageName=ADME:L:OU:US:1123

A 10000+ feedback Hong Kong based seller by the name of "megacapacity" has put up an auction titled "Battery For DELL Poweredge PERC5e BBU," and claims the following while only charging $14.35 (Buy it Now) with free shipping:

Compatible Part Numbers X8483, PERC5E, M9602, PERC5i, U8735, P9110 Compatible Model Numbers DELL Poweredge PERC5e BBU connector cable This battery is guaranteed to meet or exceed the original manufacturer specifications. This battery comes with a 12 month manufacturer’s warranty, CS batteries are some of the longest lasting and most reliable batteries on the market, and comply with the international quality, environmental, and safety standards of ISO9001, RoHS, and CE.
Click to expand...

Could it be true? After all these years, some Chinaman has started to craft these at a fraction of the cost of an OEM part while even including a free cable ($20 street value)? And just a little less than a month since I created this thread complaining about the whole situation? It all seems too good to be true. However, it's only $15 to test it out after I just bought two PERC5/i's with dead BBU's that are going to cost $50 each to replace.

I bought one. I'll post back with results but I don't know when. Who knows how long it will take since it's coming from HK.
 
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Did you remember to let the battery charge for half an hour before after installing the new battery? After that you need to reboot to let the controller redetect the battery as it will not detect the battery if it has no charge on boot and charges after boot.

This procedure is actually in the Dell manuel for various PERC5/i controllers for Dell rackmount servers.
 
idea said:
Did you receive yours yet? I order things from China all the time and it never takes this long. I emailed the seller but no response yet.
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No I have not received it but I don't expect it to be here within a week. If I don't have it in another week I will start asking questions.

UPS cannot even get something to my house from within the US in a week (of course they suck!).
 
Why can't you just rebuild the battery pack? I am sure the cells are generic and can be gotten much less expensively from any internet battery place.
 
I received mine. The seller said they were experiencing some shipping delays. It looks exactly like the photo. The cable is the wrong type (at least for a PERC5/i) so I used my OEM cable. I'm going to email the seller and let him know.

Unfortunately with the new battery installed, I still can't get the controller to recognize it. It's been charging for a few hours. And I did reboot/cold boot like the poster above suggested. I'm not sure what to think right now. Could be a bunk battery, a bad cable, or a bad connector on the card. I need to do more troubleshooting.
 
I tried my second PERC5/i with it's own cable. Same result. Battery is unrecognized or will not take a charge. Sigh.

Did anyone else install this eBay battery? Did it work?
 
Yes, I've sucessfully replaced the battery for a PERC5/i with an ebay battery.

The battery /controller is not hotswap compatabile and you need to leave it charging for some time and then reboot the controller(and thus the server) for it to recognise the, partially, charged battery.

This process is actually in the Dell manuel for a Dell 2950 rack mount server to replace the raid controller battery.
 
I have a Perc5/e with a BBU. It's not that intimidating, really, if you know Li-ion tech. You can use a prismatic cell in place of the stock cell.

Seriously... why the hell is everything Lithium Ion now when they have a shelf life of three years, period? Ni-MH is better in my book, but I'm biased since I have a thousand Panasonic Orange AA cells. 90% charge retention after 3 years storage = supernatural
 
If you've been following my posts, it's looking like I have a bad "charging circuit" on both of my cards. I don't know how common this problem is but I've read about one account of it before. I've tried 3 batteries, 2 cables with 2 PERC5/i's. Both of them came from the same seller. I don't know what to think.
 
You would need to get a little creative with a DVM to be sure of the status of your BBU's and the charging circuit on your Perc's.

Personally I would believe 3 bad batteries before I believed 2 bad charging circuits on the cards. Or even the cables before I suspected the cards. But anything is possible.

Leave them plugged in and powered up for a day before giving up on them. You also should be able to ohm out the cables.

Don
 
Sorry to disappoint you guys but I don't know how to use a multimeter. I'm returning these two PERC5/i's and looking for yet another one. This time with a guaranteed working BBU. Could my diagnosis be wrong... could the 2 cables and 3 batteries be bad, and the PERCs are fine? I personally don't think so but it's absolutely possible. I just don't have the time or the funds to spend on it anymore :(
 
JC881 BBU Cable
NU209 Battery


The last time I ordered, I searched based on the above Dell Part Numbers.
The cable and the battery used seems to matter as I have tried LSI based
parts (Battery + Cable) on my PERC controllers before without success - got
similar symptoms you posted.

Calrification ... the LSI batteries came with a charge ..so it was fine
on initial install, but a few days later, I got controller messages on bootup
saying no BBU installed. The batteries had run down and were not recharging.

This is when I decided to order two new Dell batteries (NU209)
and two new Dell cables (JC881).

Both systems have been running fine for over a month now.
I check them once a week if I am not actively using them.


Ultimately .. the cables seem to matter most ... one extra little wire may mean charge vs. no charger.
But I am not an expert ... just my recent experience.
 
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