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Battery nearing expiration

A battery is nearing the end of its useful life.

Important

  • The purpose of the battery is to preserve cached data during a power failure. Therefore, you should replace the battery as soon as possible.

  • Contact your Technical Support Engineer if you do not have a replacement battery available.

CAUTION
Electrostatic discharge can damage sensitive components

Always use proper anti-static protection when handling components. Touching components without using a grounding wrist strap may damage the equipment.

CAUTION
Risk of data loss

The NV status LED on the controller will stay lit until all cached data has been written to the storage array's drives. Removing the controller before the NV status LED has turned off will result in data loss.

Recovery Steps​

  1. Do you want to replace the affected battery before it expires?

    • If yes, go to step 2.

    • If no, wait for the battery to expire and then replace the battery using the recovery steps in the Battery Expired procedure once it appears.

  2. Create a back-up of the storage array's configuration data on your local system using the Command Line Interface.

    From a command prompt run the save storageArray dbmDatabase command using the sourceLocation=onboard and contentType=all options.

    Command Prompt example: (exact syntax will be dependent on your operating system)
    SMcli (hostname or IP address) -c "save storageArray dbmDatabase sourceLocation=onboard contentType=all
    file= \"dbmDatabase.zip\" ;"

    Help with E-Series CLI commands is available from the online Document Center or by contacting Technical Support.

  3. Does your storage array have one or two controllers?

    • If the storage array has one controller, go to step 4.

    • If the storage array has two controllers, go to step 12.

  4. Stop I/O from all hosts connected to the storage array and wait at least five minutes to ensure that any data in the controller's cache is written to the storage array's drives.

  5. Select the Save icon in the Recovery Guru to save the remaining steps to a file. These steps will no longer be accessible after you complete step 6.

  6. Turn off power to all power-fan canisters in the controller shelf.

  7. Label each cable connected to the controller canister.

  8. Remove the controller.

  9. Replace the affected battery by following the battery replacement procedure in your hardware documentation.

  10. Re-insert the controller canister firmly into place and reconnect the cables.

  11. Turn on power to all power-fan canisters in the controller shelf. Wait until all drives have completed the spin-up process, and then go to step 19.

  12. Are any hosts connected to this storage array NOT running a host-based, multi-path failover driver?

    • If yes, stop I/O from those hosts to the storage array, and then go to step 13.

    • If no, go to step 13.

  13. Select the Save icon in the Recovery Guru to save the remaining steps to a file. These steps will no longer be accessible after you complete step 14.

  14. Manually place the affected controller offline.

    1. Go to Hardware.

    2. Highlight the controller shown in the Details area. The controller is located on the backside of the controller shelf.

    3. Select Place Offline.

  15. Select Recheck to rerun the Recovery Guru. The original Battery Nearing Expiration problem should now be replaced by an Offline Controller problem.

  16. Follow the recovery steps in the Offline Controller procedure until you have removed the controller.

  17. Replace the affected battery by following the battery replacement procedure in your hardware documentation.

  18. Re-insert the controller by completing the recovery steps in the Offline Controller procedure.

  19. Select Recheck to ensure the problem has been resolved.