Until recent my Intel RAID controller (SROMBSASMR) had a monthly occurrence of "BBU disabled: changing WB logical drives to WT", followed about 2 1/2 hours later by "Battery relearn complete".
Since a little over 2 weeks "BBU disabled" started appearing outside of this cycle in a steady pattern each 2 or 3 days*
I'm wondering what this means. Should I replace the battery? Is the controller about to fail?
For the record: I do know what the BBU disabled and relearn messages in themselves mean.
*to be precise 3 times spaced apart by 2 and 3 days, this cycle turn repeated every 8 days. I expect the next occurrence tomorrow in the early afternoon, roughly 2PM.
Best Answer
Well, the official Intel RAID Smart Battery AXXRSBBU3 technical product specification says “Intel recommends replacing the battery yearly”, so the battery getting bad after an year is possible (especially if the battery is really older and was sitting on the shelf for some time before assembling the server — Li-Ion batteries lose capacity with time even when they are not in use).
You can try to get more information about the battery state: download the Command Line Tool appropriate for your OS from Intel Download Center, then run the following command:
It should output lots of information about the battery state (however, the detail level probably depends on the controller model). One thing you should check, in addition to obvious things like date of manufacture and “Full Charge Capacity” (measured during battery relearn cycles) compared to “Design Capacity” (which the brand new battery should have), is the battery temperature — although the specified operating range is up to 45°C, running at the temperature close to that maximum greatly shortens the battery lifetime.
You may also be able to obtain at least parts of the detailed battery information from GUI management utilities you might have already installed on the server.