Solved: Cisco MCS 7825-H3 Powers On, But Nothing More

sdiver · ‎11-24-2014

I have a pair of Cisco MCS 7825-H3 CallManagers, and due to repeated power issues on our campus today, both went down ungracefully went power was lost...and stayed down. So we have no functioning phones on site.

At this point, both MCS 7825-H3's will power on. The hard drives lights flash, then go out (like normal).e The fans spin up fast and loud. But I get nothing else. On the front of the device, the system health LED is solid green, the network LED flashes green with activity, and the hard drive activity LED is solid green. A connected VGA monitor displays nothing.

I am at a standstill...and am not sure if this is a hardware problem, a software problem, or another problem altogether. Anyone have any ideas?

Thank you,

Steve

Terry Cheema · ‎11-24-2014

Steve - if the servers are showing blank screen on monitor connected to console, it appears they are not even initialising the POST process. It could be due to a faulty component - could be CPU, RAM, motherboard..anything....

Generally with this kind of issues, you try to isolate faulty hardware, by rebooting without any component and see if it reaches POST. I would suggest open a case with TAC and I hope the servers have active maintenance.

On another note try changing the monitor cable etc. to rule out any issue with any cable or monitor (which i doubt would be the case) just to make sure and then try a reboot and see if you see anything on screen.

-Terry

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Terry Cheema · ‎11-24-2014

Steve - if the servers are showing blank screen on monitor connected to console, it appears they are not even initialising the POST process. It could be due to a faulty component - could be CPU, RAM, motherboard..anything....

Generally with this kind of issues, you try to isolate faulty hardware, by rebooting without any component and see if it reaches POST. I would suggest open a case with TAC and I hope the servers have active maintenance.

On another note try changing the monitor cable etc. to rule out any issue with any cable or monitor (which i doubt would be the case) just to make sure and then try a reboot and see if you see anything on screen.

-Terry

sdiver · ‎11-25-2014

Terry - Thank you for the quick response last night. It was absolutely a faulty hardware component...a RAM chip in each of the Cisco MCS 7825-H3 CallManagers was fried during the repeated power outages. After isolating the bad RAM chip, and popping in a new RAM chip, the servers both booted without issue.

Luckily, we had an identical spare server (that was no longer in production) that I could pirate RAM from to replace the bad chips.

Thanks again!

Steve

Terry Cheema · ‎11-25-2014

I am glad to hear your issue is resolved Steve :-)

-Terry