IBM x330 Series Server Question

mgeorge

Well I'm pretty flabbergasted with this server I picked up the other day. I was planning on making it into a web server to host personal files and what not.

Dual 1.4ghz 2x 18.2GB 15k, 1gb 133mhz ecc registered with raid 4Lx (drives on raid 1)

I've installed 2003 Server R2 enterprise and it took 7 hours to install.

I use all x335's my self and they work great. I've noticed that with the 330, the cpu utilization jumps to 100% alot whenever a simple program is run such as right clicking my computer and going to computer management. the cpu jumps to 100% and it takes like 4 seconds to load cm.

If any one has experince on x330's and have some suggestiongs then shoot. Ive done flashed bios to 1.05 and upgraded raid card's firmware/bios to 7.12

If i cant get this thing fixed ima scrap it ^_^

KGhaleon

Not sure I can help, but did you check the obvious things first like the system or installation logs? I'd also keep it off the network until you have it patched.

How much space did you use when you installed this? Seven hours is pretty strange. It's probably a hardware issue.

KG

mgeorge

Yeah 7 hours is rough, during the installation the cpu utilization (both cpu's) were at 100% and it seemed like it was taking forever for it to copy stuff to the hard drives (raid1)

Well i eliminated the hard drives and raid card by connecting it to a different server and it fired up fine.

I know ibm is good at adding alot of crap to their servers such as service management processors and crap which is not really needed. I'm going to slap 2 600mhz processors in it today when i get off work and try to elimnate the processors.

But if any one has any random ideas ill give them a try ^_^

mgeorge

Well apparently the motherboard has been repaired. Their is a green wire running from the CPU VRM to the memory I/O regulator. I did a diag on the processors and they are fine but the motherboard makes it seem as if the 2nd processor (proc2 socket) has bas a bad mmx execution core regardless of what cpu is in it.

So Ive come to the conclusion that I gotta replace this genericly repaired motherboard.

any who... figured i'd post my resolution ^_^

mgeorge

Well after updating the bios i didnt load default values in the bios so it was using a previous version of bios information, apparently this was causing my server to fail diags, The server boots 2003 Server R2 in 3.4 seconds. This machine boots 2003 Server R2 faster then my e6700 (must be those 18.2gb 15k u160's on raid 1)

Apparently IBM servers store the bios information in a seperate chip so the Service processor can access it as well.

Compaq servers used to be this way as well, but compaq made the bios load default configuration after you updated the bios. Apparently the wire from the vrm to the mem io controller is required, wont even power on with out it.

Figured i'd post this so people who have this problem has a solution..

Symptons will be power supply over heating, processors failing onboard diagnotics tests, cpu utilization will be 100% most of the time and the machine runs slower then a 486.

hope this helps people that were as frusterated as i was on the x330's (laughs)