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PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 6:00 am 
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G'day,

My ex490 had a dummy spit the other week and I ran the Recovery disc and it is now up and functioning (slower than previously though)

However when I restart it I get 5 Red flashes of the health LED (not sure if it was doing this before the recovery) - I can't get to the bottom of this and hoping to tap into some of the wisdom here to work it out. The user guide says it is a MULITPLE BOOT FAILURE. and then contact HP - which is no longer an option.

I am wondering if it is a BIOS issue... after a bunch of research I pulled the server apart and took out the CMOS battery and replaced it - hoping this might help - No Joy.

The LED flashes RED even if there are no drives in it.

I would opt for a reset but not convinced this will resolve it (and not overly joyed about loading back in 7 TB of data unless I need to) Does a reset resolve BIOS issues as well or do I have bigger issues?

Any insight will be much appreciated.

Drew


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PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 10:34 am 
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When you first turn your EX490 the health light will blink Red and AquaWhite 5 times which as you may recall from your recovery is when you would press the Status/Recovery to place the server into recovery mode. After the 5 blinks of AquaWhite and Red you will see the Health Light blink blue and the Network LED will turn on and off and back one. The Health LED will continue to blink blue until the server is fully booted and then turn solid Blue if all is well or Red if there is an issue for you to look at. The hard drive Light Bars will remain off until the server is booted after which they will turn on.

In my experience over the years with the HP MSS regardless of the model is how attentive one becomes after an issue is encountered and for me this occurred back with my first recovery of the EX470 and like you I was seeing the Health Light Blink Red during the boot sequence. I recall that being an eye opener because at the time it was my only server but the unit fully booted and after that I decided it would be best to observer everything when it was running well so that I would know when things were not running well.

While recoveries are at times necessary its best to avoid them when ever possible because of the time it takes to fully perform one and its important to know the condition of your drives because WHSv1 is so sensitive to drive issues that a failing drive can cause recovery failures or long recoveries. To make these matters worse is the server being headless so you really don't know what the server is doing so a recovery should always be a last resort.

In your case you were able to perform a recovery which is a good indicator your server is in very good condition and the sluggishness you mention is understandable. When you perform a recovery your server will have a lot of work to do and so it will take sometime for it to settle in. The first being the updates and while the EX49x was released towards the end of WHSv1 there are still quite a few updates the server will need to download and install and that's just on the Microsoft side because there are also updates from HP. So the updates alone take a day or two if you were to sit there and download all of them which is recommended because of the Client Backup Database issue and with WHS needing to catch up with the updates.

Then there is Drive Extender or DE which will tax any WHSv1 server as it looks for issues in the Storage Pool and settles in. DE can place a heavy hit on your processor and so while its active after a recovery you will see a reduction of performance.

If you configured the media functions those alone can cause a server to become very sluggish and if those are doing their business while DE is active just walk away and let the server settle in for a few days but this depends on what you configured. With that is an HP Patch which caused issues with Twonky and that issue will cause a server to hang and its a rather annoying issue but one which was quickly address by Alex here and you can review that from the following link: http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/03 ... 0-patch-2/

Once your server does settle in you should notice its responsiveness return to normal. If your EX490 has the stock Celeron well that's not the fastest animal in the world to begin with. I have an EX49x with an E5800 CPU and it increases the performance but for me these days compared to my other servers its very slow but what I will tell you is the E5800 will increase your servers performance and run cooler then the Celeron or E5200 that HP used in the E495 and X510 and it will not break the bank because the last time I checked on eBay I could get a new one for $58 USD. You can get them used but those are hit and miss.

Hope this helps and if you should have additional questions or concerns please let me know.

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PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 10:57 am 
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well,
first it is normal that the health led blinks red several times during boot up, but then when boot has completed it should be solid aqua.
To read the error code on the led you first need to let it boot completely then using a paperclip in the hole push it once then count the colors.

Also when you perform a recovery it will be slow for a while. Due to it is a new os install.
It is performing updates and the drive balancer runs for a lot.
Also you might need to re-install the connector software on the client after a update.
It may take a few days to settle down.

Now if you replaced the battery for the cmos.
That may be a issue now.
I have never done it on the server.
But I would bet that like most any other pc that it may be prompting to accept default settings for the bios.

Bottom line you did not say if the server still boots and show healthy when boot has completed and it is working.

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PostPosted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 8:40 pm 
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Thank you both for your detailed and considered responses. I am truly in your debt as wrangling my server has been a long and ongoing (occasionally painful) learning curve.

CHIP UPGRADE
Thanks for the chip upgrade suggestion. I should have mentioned this was of the first things I did and replaced the OEM with Intel dual core E6600. When I first did this I could see the performance of both processors in the HomeServer Consol, now I can only see one. However I have checked via Remote Desktop and can see both cores and that they are functioning. Some research on shows this may be a software update issue? viewtopic.php?f=25&t=11325&hilit=flashing

LEDS FLASHING – only on bootup
Just a point of clarification re the red Flashing LED’s – this is till happening each time I boot. However I should have pointed out in my original post that all the lights then settle down to be solid blue when the system is up and running – so I should just ignore the flashing lights on start up?

REBUILDING IS PERHAPS THE SOLUTION?
It has been a week since the Recovery but the system is still running slowly – I use it to mainly stream music streaming using Logitech Media Server and loading songs is taking considerably longer than previously. A couple of years ago I had a crash and did a recovery and had the same result… it was only a full Rebuild that got it running full speed again. I am thinking this is the path I need to go down again to get the speed issue sorted and also this flashing light stuff – I would prefer not to though obviously as it is labour intensive… also don’t want to do a rebuild if it turns out the 5 flashes are indicating another problem such as BIOS. (does a Factory Reset also restore the BIOS?)

DRIVE HEALTH
After the crash that sent me down the recent Recovery path I took the drives out and scanned them in a caddy. Using Microsoft Tools there were no faults. However using Western Digital Data Lifeguard my primary drive was rejected as there were too many bad sectors, as were another 2 drives! Not happy with that I installed the ADD IN – StableBit Scanner. I did full testing via this and all drives came up OK. I am going with the 2 out of 3 good results rather than buy 3 new drives.

I am reluctantly inclined to rebuild the system and use another drive as the primary drive – which leads me to my next query

DATA TRANSFER
What is the fastest way of loading data in and out. The best seems to be Easy USB – but it is literally taking around 3 days to shift 2TB. I wish I could get that to do it via the esata port as I have and esata caddy. http://www.mediasmarthome.com/add-in-re ... -transfer/

I am almost thinking that maybe I should ditch WHS v1 and move to WS2012E – however I have had such a pain curve with this I really do not relish facing a new system to learn and also more software to buy. I just want the system to play music and movies and I backup everything elsewhere.

I really do appreciate the time it takes answering these questions – I have searched high and low for info before asking – I greatly appreciated the advice and guidance given

Regards

Drew
EX490
Intel E6600
4 x WDC WD2002 FAEX 2TB 007BAO
Netgear N300


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 3:38 am 
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A Server Recovery or Factory Reset does nothing to the BIOS so we can put that one aside.

If you make a Remote Desktop Connection to the server you can pull up the Task Manager, make sure all tasks is selected and look for anything that's tasking the processor.

The console use to show all the cores on the processor but now it shows only one. The issue presented itself after an update and HP never addressed it and probably will never address the issue in future.

As long as the server is booting up and running with no issues other then the current speed issue I would ignore the Flashing Red LED at the beginning of the boot process.

The ADD-IN to install to monitor the physical health of your hard drives is HomeServerSMART: http://www.dojonorthsoftware.net/HomeSe ... c.html#all

A failing hard drive can cause issues with WHS and degrade server performance. WHS monitors only the file system health but HomeServerSMART monitors the physical health of the drives.

As far as new drives you will need to become acquainted with how to properly use Advanced Format or AF drives with your server or Legacy OS. For this I would recommend performing a site search on Advanced Format Drives. Also search the forums to see which drives others are using successfully with WHSv1.

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Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8


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