Power went out - Now server won't boot

S

Sungaisu

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 18, 2009
Messages
416
Well, I just got into work and everyone is freaking out, apparently the power went out real quick about 2-3 times and now our server won't go past the 'windows loading screen'.

I don't know much about servers, but I'm pretty computer savvy, it's connected through a UPS so I don't think the power outtage should have been a problem (Don't ask me why they decided to restart it)

When I came in, it was a grey screen all I could see was the mouse and I could move it around but I couldn't do anything else. So I did a hard restart (Hold the power button, since a simple push wouldn't do anything). I let it sit for a bit, and it reboots just fine, no error messages or anything, but stays on the "Windows Server 2003" load screen.

Any ideas? It has an external drive connected to it through eSata, I tried turning that off before restarting it again and it didn't work. Need help ASAP, thanks in advance.

Edit for info:
It's running Windows Server 2003 R2
Dell PowerEdge 2900 I Tower (that's just the manual)
Windows SQL 2005 Standard edition

I have a few CDs that came with the server labeled,
Dell Systems Management Consoles
Dell Service and Diagnostic Utilities
Dell Installation and Server Management (Bootable CD)
Dell PowerConnect 2000 Series Switches
Windows Server 2003 R2 installation CDs
SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition CDs
 
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With lots of modern servers there's a Baseboard Management Controller (or similar feature). This device should be active when AC is applied. You typically interact with it via IPMI/SMASH/ssh or http via a dedicated or shared network port.

It often records an event log which could be helpful in isolating the failure.
 
Do you have a RAID? If so does it have a BBU attached?
 
Lots of stuff I don't know.

I don't know what BBU is, but it definitely has a RAID, of about 6 drives, plus 2 that are in another RAID for the OS. What do you mean by replacing the AC? I just don't want to start assuming stuff if I'm not 100% sure.
 
If you dont know this, then you dont need to be fixing it.

Call Dell.
 
Just out of curiosity, have you left it in it's loading state? Sometimes it just takes a few minutes to completely get past the startup. I have a couple VM's running as Active Directory Domain Controllers and take sometime to completely boot up (about 5 minutes).

We better wait for k1pp3r to chime in ;)
 
Ok, I figured as much, but you never know these days with everyone abbreviating things. I've turned it off, unplugged it, and hit the power button, left it there for about a minute and plugged it all back in to no avail.

@00PS, I tried that as well, that was my initial reaction ("Well maybe it's just taking it's sweet ass time), but after about 10 minutes, nothing.
 
Sounds like your Raid1 O/S volume may have gotten corrupted, or at least the mirror is out of sync- seen it plenty of times before and usually when someone didn't bother with a BBU, so learn it, live it - had you had one,.when the power got yanked, any data in the cache uncommitted to the drive would've gotten written back from the battery backed memory. Try this:

1. turn system off completely, yank all power cords for 10 seconds and then plug them back in. not trivial - this makes sure motherboard isn't in some funky state.
2. remove drive #2 of the Raid1 O/S drive pair, and boot. If it comes up, great, reinsert second drive and let it rebuild array
3. if system still hangs at startup, turn everything off, and do the reverse: yank drive #1 and leave drive #2 in there, and see if it boots. If so, reinsert drive #1 and let it rebuild array.
 
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