Looking for Help- Supermicro 846 Won't Power On

[FirstClass]

*I’ve been lurking here for a while and hoping to lean on some of the expertise I’ve been reading.
I recently decided to take the plunge from consumer hardware into the server realm to get the 13 spinning disks I have in a tower into a dedicated rack mount NAS/VM machine. After a lot of research, I went with a used Supermicro 846 chassis. I received it, checked that it was in good physical shape, installed it in my rack, connected power, and everything spun right up. It was late at that point, so I stopped before connecting anything else (IMPI, etc) and never tried to log in or check the bios. When I came back to it the next day after work, it was powered off and would not power back up.

Specs of the build:

• Chassis: CSE-846E16-R1200B
• Motherboard: X9DRi-F
• Processor: 2x Intel Xeon E5-2695 V2 12 Core 2.4GHz
• Memory: 128GB DDR3 (8 x 16GB - DDR3 - ECC REG)
• Controller: 1x LSI 9211-4i HBA JBOD 6GB/S (set to IT Mode)
• Backplane: BPN-SAS2-846EL1 24-port 4U SAS2 6Gbps single-expander backplane
• Power Supplies: 2x PWS-920P-SQ Super Quiet

Troubleshooting and Symptoms:

• I did cable up the IPMI and NIC1 Ethernet connections now. The NIC1 front panel LED is flashing.
• There are no other front panel LED’s lit. This includes the Power LED. If I’m reading the manual correctly it should be lit whether the system is online or not, but the phrasing has me second guessing.
• The power supply LED’s are both solid Amber. The manual was not super helpful here either stating this is either off+normal or off+abnormal.
• The BMC Heartbeat LED is blinking green, which the manual is telling me is normal.
• I have tried removing and reseating both power cables, removing and reseating both PSU’s, leaving the chassis unplugged for over 12 hours, etc with no change in symptoms.
• When I initially plugged the first PSU in, the PSU alarm went off as expected. When I got the second PSU connected it turned off as expected. The fans came on at full speed and came down within a minute or two as expected.

Any guidance or troubleshooting suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[Chris Moore]

Have you tried to remote into the IPMI interface?

 

[joeinaz]

Did the power supply remain "amber" when you turned the system on?

I would try two things:

1. If you have one, use a power supply tester and test each of the power supplies. A quality motherboard will shutdown if it detects a power fault.
2. Try powering the machine with a single power supply inserted ( try each). You may still see an amber light because the system views a non-redundant power condition as an error but if one of the power supplies is good it may maintain a running system where as a failed supply will continue to fail.

A power supply tester is the better way to go as you won't risk exposing your motherboard to a faulty power source and it should indicate the fault condition as well.

 

[FirstClass]

Have you tried to remote into the IPMI interface?

I tinkered with it briefly, but wasn't able to get connected (this is my first foray into IPMI as well). My understanding is that I just web browse to the IP. From the documentation I was provided the IP is set to 10.10.1.250. Of course my home network is a 192.168.x.x setup. I manually set the IP of a laptop to 10.10.1.1 and .249, but wasn't able to get connected. I ended up dropping it because I wasn't sure if the heartbeat proved 100% that the IPMI was online. I didn't want to chase ghosts.

 

[FirstClass]

Did the power supply remain "amber" when you turned the system on?

I would try two things:

1. If you have one, use a power supply tester and test each of the power supplies. A quality motherboard will shutdown if it detects a power fault.
2. Try powering the machine with a single power supply inserted ( try each). You may still see an amber light because the system views a non-redundant power condition as an error but if one of the power supplies is good it may maintain a running system where as a failed supply will continue to fail.

A power supply tester is the better way to go as you won't risk exposing your motherboard to a faulty power source and it should indicate the fault condition as well.

1- I honestly don't have a power supply tester. I have a multiple multi-meters, including a nice Fluke, but no PSU tester. I had in my mind that a decent one was expensive, ha. I have the Thermaltake Dr. Power II on order now and I'll probably swing by Microcenter to see what they have in stock. If nothing else, thanks for getting me to pick up this tool.
2- I think I had already tried each PSU solo, but just tried again. No change in symptoms.

 

[FirstClass]

*I don't see an edit button on my posts, but missed a couple things

I did not look to see what the LED's on the PSU's looked like when I first plugged the machine in, unfortunately.

Really appreciate the replies.

 

[Chris Moore]

Here's what I'm seeing:

That is not how it used to be... Something has changed. I will need to ask about that.

I did not look to see what the LED's on the PSU's looked like when I first plugged the machine in, unfortunately.

Do you have power LEDs on the back of each power supply? Are they green?

 

[FirstClass]

Do you have power LEDs on the back of each power supply? Are they green?

There are LED's on the back. They are solid amber when plugged in.

*Also, I see the Edit option now. Thanks

 

[FirstClass]

Alright, power supply testing came back good. I tested 1, 2, and 1+2. All values looked normal. I did see an additional set of blue LED's on the backplane with the tester plugged into the 24p and 8p while the molex connectors were on the backplane.

I also tested everything normalled up with every drive cage removed. There are no drives in the cages, but just trying to limit variables.

One more PSU note, the LED's are still amber when connected normally, but do go green when connected to the tester.

It looks like the forum doesn't like my cell phone picture, but here it is.

 

[FirstClass]

If the BMC heartbeat LED is working, IPMI should be available, correct? I'm wondering if it's worth trying to work through getting it connected to see if it will boot for there. At this point I'm questioning if the power switch works (because the server spun up as soon as I plugged it in, rather than me actually using the power button).

Along those lines, can someone confirm that the front panel Power LED should be lit whether or not the system is powered on?

 

[FirstClass]

I’m headed out of town for work, but I gave the board a thorough once over and found some potential issues.

This IC seems to have some burn damage. Based on a quick google it looks to be power regulation related.

There also looks to be something partially broken off on the backplane.

 

[FirstClass]

Just an update- the vendor agrees there is a hardware problem and is shipping me a new case and motherboard.

 

[FirstClass]

Closing the loop- the vendor sent over a replacement chassis and motherboard. I swapped the CPU, RAM, etc over and everything is working as expected now. Basically I spent of ton of time trying to figure out what I was doing wrong and it was just a bad motherboard and potentially backplane.

Thanks all.