Product Startup and Maintenance Issues on Sun Fire 4150 and 4450 Servers

Asset ID:	1-77-1019241.1
Update Date:	2011-02-04
Keywords:

Solution Type Sun Alert Sure

Solution 1019241.1 : Product Startup and Maintenance Issues on Sun Fire 4150 and 4450 Servers

1. Impact

Issues and exceptions to normal installation and maintenance functions or procedures may occur on Sun Fire 4150 and 4450 servers. While the normal run-time functionality performs as designed, erroneous fault messages and start-up issues may cause incorrect diagnosis and prompt unnecessary parts replacements.

2. Contributing Factors

These issues can occur on the following platforms:

x86 Platform

Sun Fire 4150 with Software Release 1.2 and earlier
Sun Fire 4450 with Firmware release 1.1c and earlier

3. Symptoms

A) Firmware Issues: Inaccurate ECC error reporting/LED illumination, ELOM clock issues, unclear ELOM messages, inaccurate fan and PSU error detection/reporting, character echo on serial console, SP default to TTYB (instead of expected TTYA) and wrong default baud rate for use with Solaris.

B) RAID Card (SG-PCIESAS-R-INT-Z) "overtemp" messages and no HDD LEDs lit.

Note: The card is not overheating; the "overtemp" message is being sent in error.

C) DVD hangs affecting up to 5% of systems manufactured before 3/15. There is a marginal condition with a component on the power distribution board (PDB) that leads to the host detecting DVD errors or inability to mount the device. This issue applies to both the 4150 and 4450. It could potentially apply to other platforms but has not yet been fully characterized.

Notes:

The DVD-ROM MUST have been detected during BIOS POST for the above condition to exist.
The manufacture date of the system can be determined from the serial number on the front-left corner of the chassis. The format is YYWWAAPxx. YY is the year of manufacture (08) and WW is the week of manufacture. 3/15 will maps to week 12, meaning that system serial numbers 0812xxxxxx and later are not affected.

D) DVD Not seen by system during BIOS POST

4. Workaround

A) Firmware Issues: There are no workarounds for these issues with the exception of the default SP serial output direction which can be set to TTYA, and the baud rate via BIOS. Please refer to the Product Notes for more details.

B) RAID Card (SG-PCIESAS-R-INT-Z): There is no workaround for this issue. For overtemp messages and no HDD LEDs lit (Cable Routing) follow the documented installation guidelines for HDD SAS cables to ensure proper cooling airflow at http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/820-1852-11 specifically section 5.8.

C) DVD hangs: There is no workaround for this issue - If persistent, contact your Sun Service representative.

D) DVD Not seen by system during BIOS POST - Workaround: power cycle the system.

5. Resolution

These issue are addressed in the following releases:

x86 Platform

For the RAID card issue, Firmware 15825 can be downloaded from the following site:

http://support.intel.com/support/go/sunraid.htm

Software 1.3.1 (or later) for the 4150 can be found on Sun Fire X4150 Tools & Drivers CD Version 1.3.1 (or later) at

http://www.sun.com/servers/x64/x4150/downloads.jsp

Firmware 1.1d (or later) for the 4450 can be found on the Sun Fire X4450 Tools & Drivers CD Version 1.1d (or later) at

http://www.sun.com/servers/x64/x4450/downloads.jsp

It is highly recommended to install the latest version of software or firmware applicable. In addition, these platforms (which originally came out with ELOM), now have the option of transitioning to ILOM, which is also highly recommended. You must use the transitional release to move from ELOM to ILOM. Details for transitioning from ELOM to ILOM are available at:

http://docs.sun.com/source/820-4930-11/GSG_TransELOM.html

Internal Comments
Please send technical questions to the following email:
sunalert-tech-questions@sun.com
and CC the following persons:
Internal Contributor/Submitter
Internal Eng Responsible Engineer
Internal Services Knowledge Engineer
A note and advisory regarding StorageTek RAID firmware version 15816:

After FW version 15816 was released on SW 1.1d and SW 1.3.2, a
regression was discovered which caused the 15816 release to
manufacturing to be canceled. A new version, 15825 (or higher),
replaces 15816 on both the 4150 SW 1.3.3&2.0 and 4450 SW
1.1E&2.0 releases in July.

This regression bug only affects customers that migrate to or from RAID
10 modes when FW 15816 is flashed into their Sun StorageTek RAID
adapter. Customers should obviously not attempt to migrate RAID 10
formats with version 15816 installed and are strongly advised to update
to 15825 (or higher) when the next 4150/4450 SW update is available in
a few weeks. If the customer has no intentions of migrating to or from
RAID10, there is no other concern with this version.
Internal Contributor/submitter
pat.judt@sun.com
Internal Eng Responsible Engineer
Gary.Jones@sun.com, Michael.LaFlamme@sun.com
Internal Services Knowledge Engineer
david.mariotto@sun.com

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