E450 erorr Please Help

Question

Hello all,
I found the following message on one our E450 Server, running
Solaris 8:
Dec 10 14:59:37 revera dptelog: [ID 295267 daemon.notice]
The Battery Status Change Trickle Charging => Predictive Failure at Sun Dec 10 14:59:23 2006.
Can anyone out there shed some light on what this message actually means?
Is this referring to the NVRAM battery?
Should we get this fixed ASAP?
Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

"Dec 10 14:59:37 revera dptelog: [ID 295267 daemon.notice] " ...
You have one of those uncommon hardware RAID scsi
controllers in your system. In fact, I've never seen it
in any Sun system except the E450's.
It was the reference to DPTE that gave it away.
The x6542a RAID Controller, a.k.a. SRC/P card, has a
cache battery as an integral part of the card.
That battery is not a separate replaceable part.
It has a Sun part number, but I don't remember it ever
stocked as a separate part.
The RAID card was discontinued many many years ago.
Here's a link to a drawing of that RAID controller
at a third party web site.
Unless you have a service contract on that old but very
productive computer, I see two choices. You can get
an equally old replacement from an online auction site
( such as Ebay ), or you can begin to plan to replace
your hardware RAID configuration with a simple
SCSI card and a software RAID config.
Hmmmmm........ Then again, if you are extremely
creative and handy, you could find some way to use
a generic NiMH replacement for the battery.
Battery technical specs? You will need to figure that out on your own.