Hi All,
I recently inherited two R710's with the same specs. Both were quite behind on their BIOS and firmware updates (one was using 2.2.x the other 3.0.0) so I thought I would be a good idea to bring them up-to-date.
Using the Centos boot disk I flashed them both with the latest 6.4.0 BIOS BIN file. Both seemed to update fine, but following the update the server that was previously on BIOS ver 3.0.0 is now not showing any BIOS version at all!!
By that I mean that during POST the Dell screen says 'BIOS Version' and then nothing. Also if I go into the BIOS menu, no version is reported. Nor is it reported in any of the Dell utils / iDRAC.
The same server is also exhibiting some other BIOS related weirdness:
- it will no longer go into the F10 LC menu - it just freezes while loading.
- Sometimes the Dell BIOS boot splash screen is corrupted. All I see is a blue gradient that starts half way down the screen.
- In VMware ESXi VCenter the server Make/Model is not reported.
I tried to rectify these issues by clearing the CMOS - no joy. Flashing the 6.4.0 BIOS again - nope. I also upgraded all other firmware (RAID, iDRAC, NIC...etc) - no joy here either.
Finally I came across the Lifecycle Controller Repair Package. I flashed this using iDRAC and rebooted, It did nothing at all!!
So now I'm stuck. The system boots fine and will load an OS, but I'm feeling very uneasy about putting it into production.
I've considered trying to flash BIOS 3.0.0 back onto the server, but I have no idea if you can downgrade the BIOS and have been afraid to try as even the BIOS flash tool does not seem to know what BIOS version I am currently on.