Hi Guys:

I really would appreciate some help here, when you have some time.....

Hi deckards welcome to the forums.

All you need to do is describe your problem in as much detail as possible. What you have done to correct the problem. It would be great if you could familiar us with your servers setup interms of hard drives both internal and external as well as any port multipliers be it USB or eSATA connected. If you recently made changes to the server that would be good to know too.

Once you post that type of information then it can be evaluated and then we better determine a recommended course of corrective action for you to take.

I look forward to reading your information and will do my best to help you resolve your problem.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

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

for the ghost executable. you should be able to find this in either norton ghost or symantec ghost solution suite. ( I honestly can't remember where I got mine from). as for the SMI image, there are a few members on this board that might be able to help you locate the original image.

Hi All,

I've been lurking for a few days on this trying and double trying pretty much every solution suggest.

Background;
Bought a (at least) second hand EX470 from eBay for more money than I would have had I realised the restore disks and drive caddies were not included, no HDD either.

Being in the process of moving house and one thing or another took me a couple of weeks to get broadband connected, get a caddy, spare HDD, recovery desks yadda-ya etc.

Here that current status of my server PLEASE someone help me out.

When power connected, but not turned on
Front display all off.
NIC - Left LED Solid Orange, Right LED Solid Yellow

Power turned on

Connected to Router
NIC - Left LED Solid Orange, Right LED Sold Yellow (occasional flicker)
Server does not show up in DHCP list on router

Connected directly to Laptop
NIC- Solid green , occasional yellow flicker.

All HDD LEDs flash on then do not light again.

Power and Network indicators light solid blue

Status light Purple, then Blue, Red, Blue, Red, Blue, Red, Blue, Red, then Blue Flashing.

If recovery button is pressed while status LED is flashing Blue, Red network and status LEDs go out the network goes blue, status flashes red.

I have swapped wth another HDD with the same result (question: what state does the drive need to be in? blank? Partitioned? Formatted?)

I have tried Comp1962 suggestions on ways to initiate recovery mode with no joy.

I'm open to suggestions, my current thoughts are:
1 - stuffed NIC
2 - Stuffed SMI flash thingy
3 - I'm totally missing something
4 - I've been sold a duff one.

I hope I've spent enough time on the phone reporting faults on ProLiants and EliteBooks to have answered all questions for someone with better experience to give me the best answer

Thanks for you answer Gents, I'm confident someone will be able to help me out here.

Hi BlokeWithBeard welcome to the forums and sorry to hear your off to a rough start with your EX470.

Buying a used server is often a gamble and one without trays or recovery discs is a real bummer but since you have a tray and the discs now that puts you in good shape so lets see what we can do to get your server running if possible. If you do happen to get it running there is a forum member parting out his EX475 so you may be able to get some trays from him. Here is a link FYI => viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8563

The EX470 and EX475 are exactly the same the only difference between the two other then price was the hard drive compliment meaning the EX470 was shipped with at 500 GB Drive and the EX475 was shipped with 2 500GB Drives.

Best way to put your server into recovery mode is to remove the drives and disconnect ALL USB Devices then just turn it on. The health light should eventually start flashing Purple/Red. When you see this check your routers DHCP Listing to see if you see a device with the name MININT followed by other stuff. If you happen to see this your server is talking to your network if you do not then something is inhibiting your servers connectivity.

I did read your LAN STATUS LEDs and you should see the Left Side Green and the Right Side Blinking Amber/Yellow or Orange what every you want to call the color but even I have to look up the color meanings. You indicated that when you connected the server to a Laptop that you saw Green and blinking yellow. This tells me your server LAN Port maybe ok that the problem may lie with a bad port on a switch or router in which case I would suggest you move the LAN connection and if possible connect it directly to the router. Question is....is the router or the switch where you had the server connected is it a gigabit connection or 10/100? This will also affect the connection but will slow things down and change the color of the LAN Lights but the right LED should have some blinking activity on it even with the server powered off and the the Left LED should be Green and the Right LED should be blinking.

If you can get the server to connected somewhere where you see good results then turn it on without the hard drives and check your routers DHCP listing for a device name MININT followed by other things. Its important to note that the other things change everytime you put the server into its recovery mode but the MININT does not. If you see this you may want to take the time to write the MAC Address of the server down as it will help you in the future identify the server regardless of its name.

So lets start with getting a good connection on your network then you can try performing the server recovery which will need to be a FACTORY RECOVERY.

Please let me know how you make out and any issues you encounter along the way.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

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

Hi Comp1962,

Thanks for the suggests, I think I was heading in the same direction with my thoughts.

The router is a D-Link DIR-600 (standard model sent from my ISP/Cable provider) which is 10/100, and the connect to it is currently via a 10 meter CAT-5 cable, (it's going to get moved closer just haven't got spare power closer ATM) I've swapped over and tried a couple of different ports and cables (known good, but still same length) with no change.

Think I probably gonna borrow another router from work and some shorter cables and see if I get a different result.

I plan to swap the router for a Linksys WRT320n when I find one at a reasonible price just to get gigabit LAN.

I'll let you know how I get on.

On a side note I have found a supplier that advertises caddies available here in the UK, I've managed to get 1 from them so far and have had another 3 on order for the last week and no news, if they come through I'll spread the word. Price is around the £10 mark can't remember off the top of my head.

Thanks for the help so far.

Hello blokewithbeard. For what its worth, i use a Linksys (Cisco) WRT160Nv3 and have been very happy with it. I am running Ubuntu 10.4 on my EX470 but have tried it with the standard WHS and the router works very well. It would be great if you could supply the company that sells the trays here in the UK as i do tend to swap my HDD's about abit. Thanks in advance.

_________________
HP MediaSmart Server EX470. 2Gb Ram, AMD64 bit processor (running 32bit). 350Gb Hitachi HDD. Running Linux LUbuntu v14.04.

Hi StefFJay,

If I haven't said it before, thanks for your previous help.

I've currently got my order for caddies in with Ripcaster (https://www.ripcaster.co.uk/node/483 listed at the bottom of the page) they have managed to supply me with one previously (pretty much a test on my part as I'd never heard of them before) took them around a week to let me know it was being shipped and turned up a couple of days later. Current order was placed last Tuesday and I haven't heard that it's been shipped yet (they haven't charged my card either though).

Hope that helps.

The 10 meter cable should not be an issue at all nor is it long enough to degrade the communications. The 10/100 connection will slow things down for your server.

I would still remove the drives and disconnect any connected USB Devices then check your routers DHCP listing to see if you see MININT show up. This will indicate that your server is in recovery mode and that its LAN port is functional.

Then shut the server down and remove the console software from the client your going to use for the recovery. Slide the system drive in but do not push it all the way in just yet. Turn the server on and wait for the health light to start blinking Red/Purple and the second you see that slide the system drive all the way in then run the server recovery software. This is how I prefer to place my EX470's into recovery mode because I am always looking for a paper clip and never can seem to find one so I do it this way. Now run the server recovery software and follow the instructions. Just know your server is in recovery mode so ignore that instruction to place it in recovery mode because its already in that mode.

With a little luck you should have your server ready to go within 1 hour after which the software will guide you through the configuration steps for your server which will take some time. After you have done the setup stuff then download all the HP and Microsoft updates from the Server Console. Then create the user accounts and install the console connector software on your other computers. Then if you have not done so already setup remote access. Its easy you will see.

If you run into issues along the way or have questions please come back and let me know and I will do my best to help you out.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

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

Ok, last nights testing.

Connected server to different router with different cables (half meter, know I should be good with up to 100 meter, but for sake of mind ).

Only other device connected is my laptop.

Laptop get green link LED, server has orange/yellow link only, router shows link LED.

DHCP on router only shows laptop.

Assumption: This looks like a software/firmware issue to me, I would have expected different LED combination if it were a BIOS issue and no activity from the NIC if it were an issue there. To me, working blind as I'm headerless (and you guys have far more experience than me with these boxes) this looks like a possible NIC driver issue.

Question: If I were to create a bootable flash drive with Vail on it, as the system would be using this to boot rather that the recovery drive, would I expect to see anything different, or could I just be getting myself into a whole new world of pain?

As always, open to suggestions.

What is the behavior of the front LEDs when you boot the server with no drives installed? Please describe the full LED behavior in detail.

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins?

Hi Yakuza,

Hope this makes sense.

drive LED's all flash RED

Power - Blue constant
LAN - Blue constant

Status as follows:
Purple long
Blue
Red
Blue
Red
Blue
Red
Blue
Red
Blue
Red
Long Blue
Red
Purple
Red
Purple
Red
Purple
Constant Red

Thanks for your help.

Push the recessed "recovery" button while the health LED is solid red, and look up the blinky code in the wiki or post it here.

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins?

One Blue, Five Red... Multi Boot failure.... oh Fudge!....

Is that dead SMI drive?

Yeah, means the recovery image is gone for some reason. It's possible to boot the server off of a USB flash key with the recovery image.

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins?