Wednesday 2 February 2011

Dell Poweredge 2950 Failure

Server failure
This server failed with the error "E171F PCIE Fatal Err B0 D3 F0" during power up. Upon inspection it was found that the 5/I PCIe SAS Controller card model no UCS-51 had a swollen electrolytic capacitor. This was replaced with one from an old PC motherboard, it had the same value (1500uF) and voltage rating (6.3v). After replacement the server booted and completed all it POST and began booting the OS. The server was soak tested and appeared to be operating fine. Hopefully saved an engineer call-out that probably would cost ~£500. By the way the machine was out of warranty. Below are pictures of the board and the repair.

Swollen Capacitor

Capacitor Repair
Supplemental Info A further 5 Dell servers came up with the same error and these were fixed by replacing the capacitors, bad batch of electrolytics.

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