Is 495W enough for this server?

[trents]

Sorry I can't give more detail on the specs but maybe I can give enough for someone to make an educated guess.

Machine is a Dell Poweredge server, model R270 XD with twin E-5200 CPUs and 96 gb of DDR3. I'm guessing there are 5 SAS hard drives in RAID. Two 495W PSUs but I'm sure only one is used at a time in some kind of redundancy arrangement.

The problem is it gets in a boot loop and the only message is "Conguring Memory" that flashes on the monitor for a bit before disappearing as the server starts another loop and then the same message reappears. You can hear the cooling fans ramp up and ramp down in this loop cycle. This is repeated over and over.

The guy who built the system told me he thinks the PSU is a little inadequate but was surprised at the "Configuring Memory" message not pinpointing which module was bad. I think there are other issues but I am totally inexperienced when it comes to severs.

Do you think 495 watts is adequate to power this system?

The setting is a private k-8 school and all the tech support is being done by volunteers. I am one of them but servers and networking are far from my area of expertise. The guy who built this server does this for a living as a state employee but he has decided to drop out from our school's tech support team. As you might imagine, the school runs on a very tight budget and there is not money to pay for commercial tech support services.

We're still using our old server and the one I allude to above was intended to replace it but the project was left unfinished.

 

[ratbuddy]

Reseat the RAM first, if that doesn't help, try with just one/two/three (whatever the minimum is) modules. It could be a PSU issue, but that wouldn't be my first guess.

 

[EarthDog]

I wouldn't look at the psu first either...

That said, 495W doesn't mean much... how much of that is on the 12V rail? Should be most...that system i cant imagine to pull more than 2-300W...

 

[trents]

The guy who built the server says it uses more power than normal because of all the RAM. But RAM doesn't suck much juice, does it?

ED, I think the 12v rail is 41.25 amps. I'm going by a picture of the label on an Amazon picture of what looks like he same PSU.

I took the lid off the server with the intention of testing the ram stick by stick but I'm not sure which slots must be populated.

 

[EarthDog]

RAM doesn't use a lot of power at all, correct.

41.25... that's 495W. If that is correct (and you aren't guessing dividing total output by 12v) then it will be fine.

Servers/ server motherboards will also have manuals. You can see which slots they go in from there.

 

[ratbuddy]

I think you can run that machine with a single stick in the white slot, been a while though.

 

[trents]

I think you can run that machine with a single stick in the white slot, been a while though.

I'm thinking the white slots are the critical ones as well because that's often the case with OEM motherboards. But there's more than one white slot. Two CPUs with green, black and white slots between them and on either side of them.

 

[trents]

So I found the server's manual online. Looks like with two processors installed you need a minimum of eight slots populated: A1, A2, A3, A4 and B1, B2, B3, B4. I'm deducing this from the "sample" memory configuration tables in the manual, though that is not specifically stated. Is my thinking wrong here? From the sample tables if only one CPU is installed it looks like you can run the system with only one DIMM installed.

12 modules are currently installed so if eight of those must be installed at any given time it would be necessary to somehow identify 8 good sticks out of 12 in order to find a bad one among the rest. That could take an enormous amount of time.

 

[knoober]

You mentioned that this server is being groomed as a replacement? I wonder how many known working modules are in the current server. If the number is 8 then you might be able to at least rule out step in troubleshooting. Alternatively, you could test the ram in the other server. I'll keep my fingers crossed that they use the same type of modules.

I would almost buy 8 stick of server ram before trial and error tests. Hunting through 12 sticks would be a labor. Also what if 5 sticks are already bad?

 

[trents]

You mentioned that this server is being groomed as a replacement? I wonder how many known working modules are in the current server. If the number is 8 then you might be able to at least rule out step in troubleshooting. Alternatively, you could test the ram in the other server. I'll keep my fingers crossed that they use the same type of modules.

I would almost buy 8 stick of server ram before trial and error tests. Hunting through 12 sticks would be a labor. Also what if 5 sticks are already bad?

Some good ideas. I doubt seriously if there are 8 sticks of RAM in the currently active server as it is a much less capable machine. But I do need to check that. For no other reason than the possibility it could be easily and inexpensively upgraded to continue to meet our needs.