Power Problems (Solved) Supermicro Server QRG-X9DRD-7LN4F_JBOD will not boot to post

ccdanieldb

Dabbler
Joined
Oct 26, 2016
Messages
29
I have a question about the startup procedure for the super micro X9DRD-7LN4F-JBOD. I got a Server form the TheServerStore.com and hooked it up last night but I was unable to get it to post.

The specs are below. I connected two power cables, a VGA monitor, Dell keyboard and two 8GB USB drives (one with the FreeNAS installer, and the second for FreeNAS to be installed on). After power is connected I get a green flashing led at the back of the motherboard, the solid led’s at the back of the power supplies and no other led’s light up. I pressed the power button at the front of the box and nothing happens. I tried holding down the power button with no effect.

The manual seems to call for taking out the ram and if that does not work taking out the CPU’s until I get error codes from the speaker. Before I start doing that I wanted to see if I am missing a startup step.

Any help would be great.


Respectfully
Daniel


Specs:
Supermicro 36 Bay 4U JBOD / FREENAS Ready Server W/ X9DRD-7LN4F-JBOD
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Processors: DUAL INTEL XEON PROCESSOR E5-2650 V2 EIGHT CORE 20M CACHE 2.6GHz
Memory: 128GB MEMORY (8x 16GB) DDR-3 ECC REG
Raid Controller (1): 1x LSI MR SAS 9261-8i SAS/SATA 6Gbps PCIe RAID Controller Installed
Raid Controller (2): 1x AOC-S2308L-L8E PCI-E 8-PORTS SAS/SATA 6G RAID CONTROLLER Installed
PCIe Network Card: AOC-STGN-i2S SUPERMICRO REV 2.0 DUAL PORT 10 GIGABIT ETHERNET CARD
Power Supply: 2x PWS-920P-1R
 

joeinaz

Contributor
Joined
Mar 17, 2016
Messages
188
The obvious...

1. Verify the health of the power supply with a power supply tester.
2. Try to power on the system using a small screw driver to short the power on pins on the motherboard.
3. Try to power on with the PCI cards and disks removed and a minimum memory configuration.
4. Switch DIMM modules and try to power on again.
5. Try the other CPU socket and memory bank.
6. Try a different CPU.
6. Obtain an X8 form factor video card and try to boot.
 

ccdanieldb

Dabbler
Joined
Oct 26, 2016
Messages
29
I do not have a power supply tester, but I was able to boot to post with an ATX power supply from another machine hooked up. It powered right up. I will contact theserverstore.com and see if they can send me a new set of power supplies. I do have one other question. Is it possible that the problem is with the portion of the power supply that the modular units plug into and not with the modular units themselives? I find it strange that the server would arrive in the mail with two bad power supplies out of the box even for a used unit.
 

Jessep

Patron
Joined
Aug 19, 2018
Messages
379
Did you check the power button connector on the motherboard?

1574171306932.png


Sounds like you are getting power to the power supplies, and you could log into IPMI to check status and power up.
 

ccdanieldb

Dabbler
Joined
Oct 26, 2016
Messages
29
I got two used Supermicro PWS-920P-SQ power supplies that were recommended in the mail last night and popped them in with the same result. That is, the Power button does not apply full power to the motherboard or the rest of the computer. Although the green led at LEDM1 dose start blinking slowly once mains power is attached the power supplies.

Using a momentary switch on pins 1 and 2 of JF1 has the same result. Removing the Ram, CPU's and raid cards does not help. I have not tried attaching a video card because I do not have one that fits the MB.

So far I am doubting that 4 power supplies are bad, but they are all used.

Given that attaching a separate ATX power supply to the motherboards 24 pin and two 8 pin connectors worked as far as getting the server to power up and boot. I think that the PDB is bad.

Can anyone point me to a source that shows how to remove it or check it?

My next step will be to unplug the back plane's power from the PDB and see if the computer will power up. That should rule out any problems with the back plans. I will give it a try tonight and post the results.

If that does not work I have read that I can short pin 16 on the 24 pin power connector when all power is disconnected from the MB and backplanes to test the power output of the PBD. Is this step recommended?
 

Snow

Patron
Joined
Aug 1, 2014
Messages
309
With that PDB and supply the board should work with only one supply. It sounds like the PDB is bad, They are pretty cheap to replace. What rack Chassis is it? Should be like CSE-874 if this is your Chassis. it will be 1 of 2 of these parts. Also the 36 bay unit requires 1200W supply's I do not think 920's will work.

Power DistributorPDB-PT847-8824124pin standard output with 5V high current 100Amp power distributor board for SC847
Power Supply & AccessoryPWS-1K23A-1R2AC-DC 1200W, Titanium Level, Redundancy, 1U, PMBUS 1.2, +12V/+5Vsb, 360x76x40 mm,HF,RoHS/REACH

SuperMicro Link To 4U Chassis
 
Last edited:

ccdanieldb

Dabbler
Joined
Oct 26, 2016
Messages
29
Bottom line is that the power supply and PDB were fine. Also the Supermicro PWS-920P-SQ 920W do work with no drives installed. I was just drawing too many amps/watts at the wall. Read below.

As it turns out the problem was only related to the power supply. You see I live in Japan and maybe I should have added that in the first place. But it seems that the power supplies wanted to draw more watts from the wall than was possible on my power strip. OK, so the power here is 100v at 50htz. That is normally not a problem for non-motorized electronics. As most electronics are rated for 100-220v at 50-60htz. But locally in addition to the 100v, most power outlets in Japan are non-grounded nonpolarized. So, for the most part, I use surge protectors for all my grounded equipment because the local surge protectors have a grounding wire that I can wire to the screw holding down the wall outlet.

This means that at that outlet I had two desktop computers and a laptop running when trying to run the server off the same outlet. The server just did not even try to start. When I decided to tear the server down to find the problem I moved it across the room and just broke the grounding pins off the two mains cables and I connected them directly to the wall. To my surprise it turned right on. I put the ram, CPU's back in and hooked it up to the monitor and keyboard and, well, it worked without any problems.

I hope this information may help someone.
 

tenizar

Cadet
Joined
May 21, 2021
Messages
1
Hei there

I did not read the forum rules or something. I just stumbled trough google upon this thread. I face a similar issue.

Got a hold of used Supermicro SC848 CSE-848, 24x bay with a X9QR7-TF-JBOD mainboard and I even managed to configure the RAID Controller and get an OS installed. After that i powered the system down, unplugged and moved it to another room. I booted the system, in dire hope it would come back online and I could connect remotely. Ofc it did not because I removed the disks for the physical move. So I decided to power the system off and and to get a monitor (either way would want one) to attach and configure the RAID Controller in pre-boot. I unplugged the system again.

As I came back today from work (with a monitor) I plugged the two power supplies in and already noticed a different behaviour. The fans did not spin up automatically as usual. And the status LEDs on the front panel remained silent. When I press the powerbutton, sometines I get a short beep, followed by the red status LED for „power failure“ (indicates failure in redundant power supply) on the front panel shortly shown red. And then nothing moves. But mostly just nothing happens when I press the power button.

The two PSUs whirl when they get powered and the amber LED shows they are up.

When I opened the chassis I noticed the LED5 flashing up with „FF“ when I power the JBOD (at the same time I get the bleep with red power supply status on front panel).

I‘m really puzzled at this point. I know it has its roots in the power supply, but I cant see what changed in that timeframe. Or what I maybe messed up with powering down the system without knowing where it was in its boot state.

Do you have an idea what could have gone wrong from the time I powered/unplugged the system until I plugged it in the other day?
Because I did not change a single thing.

Its powered by 2x PWS-1K62P-1R PSUs (1620W)
 
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