Back to Storage Management Contents Page

Battery Properties and Tasks

Dell OpenManage™ Server Administrator Storage Management User's Guide

  Battery Properties

  Battery Tasks

Use this window to view information about the battery and execute battery tasks.

Battery Properties

The battery tree-view object has the following properties.

Property

Definition

These icons represent the severity or health of the storage component. See "Storage Component Severity" for more information.

Name

This property displays the name of the battery.

State

This property displays the current status of the battery. Possible values are:

Ready — The battery is functioning normally.

Degraded — The battery needs to be reconditioned.

Reconditioning — The battery is being reconditioned. See "Recondition Battery" for more information.

Charging — The battery is undergoing the recharge phase of the battery Learn cycle. See "Start Learn Cycle" for more information.

Learning — The battery is undergoing the discharge phase of the battery Learn cycle. See "Start Learn Cycle" for more information.

Missing — The controller is missing a battery.

Power Low — The battery charge is low and the battery needs to be reconditioned.

Failed — The battery has failed and needs to be replaced.

Unknown — The battery state is not available.

Predicted Capacity Status

This property displays the charge capacity of the battery. Possible values are:

Ready — The battery can be charged to full capacity.

Failed — The battery cannot be charged and needs to be replaced.

Unknown — The battery is completing a Learn cycle. The charge capacity of the battery cannot be determined until the Learn cycle is complete.

Learn State

This property displays the current status of the battery Learn cycle. Possible values are:

Active — The Learn cycle is currently in progress.

Failed — The Learn cycle initiated but then terminated without completing successfully.

Timed out — The Learn cycle is timed out.

Requested — The Learn State displays Requested when either the controller firmware or a user attempts to initiate a Learn cycle while the battery is charging. The battery must be fully charged before the Learn cycle begins. The Learn State displays Requested until the battery is fully charged. When the battery is fully charged, the Learn cycle will begin.

Idle — The Learn cycle is currently not active.

Next Learn Time

This property displays the number of days and hours left before the controller firmware initiates the next Learn cycle.

Maximum Learn Delay

This property displays the maximum number of days and hours that you can delay the battery Learn cycle. The controller firmware automatically initiates the battery Learn cycle. You cannot stop or pause the Learn cycle, but you can delay it. See "Battery Delay Learn Cycle" and "Start Learn Cycle" for more information.

Recharge Count

This property displays the number of times the controller's battery has been recharged.

Max Recharge Count

This property displays the maximum number of times the controller's battery can be recharged.

Battery Tasks

Do the following to execute a drop-down menu battery task:

  1. Expand the Storage tree object to display the controller objects.

  2. Expand a controller object.

  3. Select the Battery object.

  4. Select a task from the Available Tasks drop-down menu.

  5. Click Execute.

Drop-down Menu Battery Tasks:

Recondition Battery

Does my controller support this feature? See "Appendix: Supported Features."

Some controllers have NiMHi batteries which need to be reconditioned approximately every six months to maintain reliability. This reconditioning cycle requires a full discharge and recharge of the battery. It ensures that the battery's capacity is being measured correctly and that the battery's full holdover time is maintained. See "RAID Controller Batteries" for more information.

The controller battery should be reconditioned when either of the following occurs:

The battery recondition takes approximately 8 to 10 hours. During this time, the battery is fully discharged and recharged. The battery holdover time is reduced to zero (during discharge) and then restored as the battery is fully charged. The write cache is disabled during the battery recondition resulting in performance degradation.

Do the following to recondition the controller battery:

  1. Expand the Storage tree object to display the controller objects.

  2. Expand the controller object.

  3. Select the Battery object.

  4. Select Recondition Battery from the Available Tasks drop-down menu.

  5. Click Execute.

NOTE: The Recondition Battery task is only available on controllers with NiMHi batteries that are in Degraded state or that have generated alert "2145". Some controllers do not have batteries. Other controllers have lithium ion batteries which are automatically reconditioned and therefore do not have a recondition task in Storage Management.

Related information:

Start Learn Cycle

Does my controller support this feature? See "Appendix: Supported Features."

Use the Start Learn Cycle task to initiate the battery Learn cycle.

The battery Learn cycle discharges and then fully charges the controller battery.

The Learn cycle recalibrates the battery integrated circuit so that the controller can determine whether the battery can maintain the controller cache for the prescribed period of time in the event of a power loss. For example, some controller batteries are required to maintain the controller cache for 72 hours.

While the Learn cycle is in progress, the battery may not be able to maintain the cache during a power loss. If the controller is using write-back cache policy, then the controller changes to write-through cache policy until the Learn cycle completes. The write-through cache policy writes the data directly to the disk and reduces the risk that data can be lost in the cache if there is a power loss.

NOTE: If you have set the controller to write-back force cache policy, then the cache policy is not changed during the Learn cycle. When using write-back force cache policy, it is possible for data loss to occur if there is a power loss while the Learn cycle is in progress.

The controller firmware automatically initiates the Learn cycle. You cannot stop the firmware from running the Learn cycle, although you can delay the start time of the Learn cycle. For more information, see "Battery Delay Learn Cycle".

NOTE: The Learn cycle cannot be performed while the battery is charging. If either a user or the controller firmware initiate the Learn cycle while the battery is charging, then the battery Learn State displays Requested. When the battery is fully charged, the Learn cycle will begin.


Back to Storage Management Contents Page