Hardware: IBM 3850 M2 and VMware

The new cluster where I work is comprised of three IBM 3850 M2 servers.  I love these things!  They are each quad, quad core machines with 64 gigs of ram but upgradeable to 256 gigs.  Hot swap power and 2 hot swap PCIx slots.  There is one thing I do hate though.  It appears that VMware health check does not get along with this server.  Each one in the cluster shows an alert within the storage controller battery, as shown below.

IBM 3850 M2 VMware Battery Error

IBM 3850 M2 VMware Battery Error

I will be following up with VMware and IBM on this issue in the future, but am to bogged down with other things currently.  Make sure to note that in the image the battery status is fully charged.

One a good note, these servers do run extremely well otherwise.  I have had one server loaded up to 58 running virtual machines and the CPU was around 20% utilization, but RAM got up to 53 gigs used.  Cant wait for that upgrade next year.  Below shows one of the servers in the cluster running its typical load.

IBM 3850 M2 Summary Screen

IBM 3850 M2 Summary Screen

Note:  Remember, the health check status is a false positive.  This is not a service affecting issue.

Update: Flashing the BIOS to the newest level did not fix the issue.  VMWare still shows the battery in alarm. 

~ by Kevin Goodman on November 17, 2008.

Posted in VMWare
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

6 Responses to “Hardware: IBM 3850 M2 and VMware”

  1. Having the exact same issue. Did you ever get it resolved. I have had no luck with either VMWARE or IBM.

    donaldo said this on February 18, 2009 at 9:14 pm

  2. Per VMware:

    This issue has been identified as a bug and this support request will be tagged to the PR. This issue will be fixed in ESX 3.5 u4. We will tag this case as a “Problem Report” and will follow up with you when the fix is available in a production release.

    kcollo said this on February 20, 2009 at 11:29 am

  3. Hi,
    I just installed 3.5 update 4 on two x3850 M2.. Same problem.
    Guess the bug is still there.

    Cheers,
    JD

    JD said this on May 22, 2009 at 12:28 am

  4. Yup, VMware said the issue would be resolved at that upagrade, be we also are having the same issue at this level. Maybe there’s hope for vSphere 4 ;)

    kcollo said this on May 24, 2009 at 3:38 pm

  5. With vSphere, these MR10k’s state that they have a “Learn Cycle Requested”. I am currently working with IBM support, but I think this is most likely a VMware bug.

    malikeye said this on September 11, 2009 at 12:43 pm

  6. The battery alert issue is resolved in Vsphere 4.0 in X3850 M2 servers. The Virtual machine suffer performance issues.
    http://communities.vmware.com/thread/210295

    Vikram said this on September 19, 2009 at 10:01 am

Leave a Reply