Bought a Perc H710 without battery for a Dell T420. Installed it, cabled it, etc. It's been running great for months. I later bought a backup battery (model #70K80) from a reasonably reputable seller (not Dell). Installed it, let the system run for several days. Yet it continued to claim (every time it was rebooted) that the battery was either discharged or faulty. Thinking I got a bum battery, I bought another. And the same thing is happening: despite having been in the system for days, if I reboot and watch the boot messages, the Perc controller prints the "The battery is currently discharged or disconnected. Verify the connection and allow 30 minutes for charging…." message every time. Going into the Perc controller menus, I can see that it thinks there is no battery.
I can't see a way to install the battery incorrectly, physically, in the H710: the cable connector plugs in only one way, and the mounting clip fits over the board only one way. So I'm down to 4 hypotheses: (1) I received a second bad battery in a row, (2) I have the wrong type of battery, (3) I'm not doing something else that needs to be done when installing a battery in the H710, or (4) something is wrong with the H710 card itself.
To help eliminate #3, can people explain whether there is any other step involved in adding a backup battery to the H710, besides mounting the battery on the card itself?
Best Answer
Check in OpenManage. You can run a manual learn mode to check the battery status. If you don't see the battery in OpenManage, then you got a wrong battery (2). We can't rule out (3) if you don't have a manufacturer battery. For (1) you will see the battery atleast in OpenManage.
From Dell website:
A PERC battery that is suspected to be failed or has a warning symbol displayed in OpenManage Server Administrator should have a manual Learn Cycle performed. A Learn Cycle causes the battery to discharge and recharge, and should restore the battery to a fully functional condition. In some cases, multiple Learn Cycle procedures may be required to restore the battery to an effectively charged state. To perform a manual Learn Cycle, select Start Learn Cycle from the Battery Tasks dropdown menu in OMSA.