Dell PowerEdge T320 Amber Light (system health indicator) blinking.

Take a look into your iDRAC(SEL, LCC) or OMSA to find out why its amber lightning.

Regards,

Joerg

Hi Joerg,

Thank you for your reply. I took it to a local computer repair place and he said everything looked working normally.  The only possible cause might be RAID issue. He said there was no error message during start up regarding RAID, but that was the only remaining possible cause for amber light blinking. He said he could remove one hard drive and check (the server has 2 hard drive in mirror image in software based RAID configuration), but he dd not want to do it unless I understand that the server might not reboot?? if there was an issue.

So at this point, I am not sure if I should just ignore it, or try another repair place?  I attached a screenshot of RAID configuration he showed me.

Thank you.

Hi,

Based on the screenshot, the storage seems to be fine. Do not remove any drive to troubleshoot the issue. PERC H310 is not a software based RAID, but a hardware based RAID. The amber light, can lead to many indications. Sometimes, it is just to inform you to look into the server's logs as there is a power failure, and it needs attention. From the picture, I am assuming you do not have iDRAC, so you can't have a look at the iDRAC log, but you can access the lifecycle via F10. Have a look at the logs to check if any errors there. If there isn't any error, clear the logs. Reboot the system. 

@DELL-Joey C​ 

Hi Joey,

Thank you so much for your reply. Today, when I started the server, there was this message "Invalid configuration information - please run SETUP program", but the server finished starting up normally and it works as normally. Yesterday I did not see this message.

The blinking amber was still there even yesterday when this message was not displayed. Please see photos I took while the server was starting up - one from yesterday and the other from today.

When you say try F10 to access the lifecycle, it looks like this is when I need to press F10. Once I am done looking at the error logs, how do I get out of lifecycle and let the server resume starting up?

From yesterday

From today.

Please see the screenshots. ("exit")

@DELL-Young E​ 

Thank you Young!! for the screenshot how to exit out of Lifecycle.

@DELL-Joey C​ 

Hi Joey,

Yes, it might actually be the battery.  Whenever I unplugged the server and plugged back on, the time was off. I had to manually re-set the clock.

Where is CMOS battery located? I can see button type battery (CR2032) on the board (photos attached). Is this the battery that needs to be replace?

Thank you so much for following up to help me!!

@DELL-Joey C​ 

Hi Joey,

Thank you for confirming and the link for the manual how to replace battery.

Once I replace the battery, will the blinking amber will go away automatically? Or do I still need to go into lifecycle and clear out the log to stop the blinking amber light?

I haven’t gone to the lifecycle log yet because I was a little afraid that I might do something wrong or change some setting that would make things worse...

Thank you.

Andrew

If not already done please install OpenManage Server Administrator (OMSA) and point your browser to https://localhost:1311  and just see whats going wrong.

If you swap the CMOS battery please be sure that you have written down the boot config like BIOS or UEFI and PERC Type and Startvolume

Regards,

Joerg

@Origin3k​ 

Hi Joerg,

I am away from my office until 4/30/25. When I get back, I will to try looking up the error log in lIfecycle as JoeyC recommended. It seems easier than installing OMSA..

What is the difference between looking up in lifecycle log and using OMSA to see what is going on?

When you say I need to write down the boot config before replacing CMOS battery, does that mean the boot config will change and needs to be re-configured to previous setting after the CMOS battery is replaced?

Thank you,

- Andrew.

You can install OMSA within minutes without a reboot. It should show you whats going wrong.

If you replace the CMOS Battery the server will lose its memory and all settings are reset to their defaults.

Regards,

Joerg

Hi

I looked at the lifecycle log, but could not figure out what error logs to look for (or how to clear them) - please see the screen shots of recent logs.

One thing I noticed, when I unplugged and restarted the server, there was an error message - Invalid configuration information & Time-of-day not set.

So, I think I need to replace the battery.  I am not comfortable with changing server settings myself, so I will need to have someone come in to replace the battery and re-configure the settings.

Thank you all for your help!

- Andrew.

  <Private data removed from public view. DELL-Admin>

Just to give you an update. After the CMOS battery was replaced, the blinking amber is gone and everything is good now. Thank you all for your help!!!