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We've got two Dell R900 servers deployed in a well known managed hosting provider in the US. One of the Dell R900 servers has had its 128 GB memory (32x 4 GB) swapped out 6 times now. Every time the server chassis has reported the memory ECC fault at a different location to Dell OpenManage 6.5.

We've swapped out the complete chassis (including processors) twice and sent both into Dell for diagnostics and they claim to not find a problem.

Has anyone out there experienced anything along these lines and possibly know why the chassis display and OpenManage can't agree on the failure memory bank location?

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What operating system do you use? I had similar cases on R310, 510, 710 using older linux distributions. – Nils Aug 2 '11 at 20:15
The machine having the issues is running Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. The machine not having the issues is running Windows Server 2008 SP2. Both x64. – CraigN Aug 3 '11 at 7:46
With elder linux-distributions there is a service called "microcode_ctl" that applies Intel-Microcode-Updates. This KB-article hints that there is a similar mechanism in MS-OSses. So what is the date of your last BIOS-update? – Nils Aug 3 '11 at 19:10
How relevant is a processor microcode update in this situation? Surely this is more like a BMC BIOS issue with regards to memory bank layout? – CraigN Aug 8 '11 at 9:13
I got a couple of cases where we had ECC errors with R3x0 servers (both Core i3 and XEON processors). The explanation was that they used a newer memory layout that couples CPUs with memory banks more closely. If the CPU gets some timings wrong ECC errors will result. The fix is to update the CPU-microcode... I`ve been told that HP servers with that layout suffer from the same problem (with the same solution). The Dell PowerEdge R90x series has the same memory layout... – Nils Aug 9 '11 at 21:12
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3 Answers

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Current BIOS should be 1.2.0 This sounds as if W2K8SP2 contains a newer Intel-Microcode-Update than your current BIOS - or W2K8R2SP1 downgrades to a faulty microcode... Dell is not aware that the OS might change this.

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Yes the BIOS is 1.2.0. I like to keep up-to-date. – CraigN Aug 4 '11 at 16:45
At Intel I found a microcode update from 04/28/2011 - that`s newer than the one provided by the 1.2.0 BIOS. This is just a guess. Perhaps someone who is more deeply into W2K8 can elaborate here... – Nils Aug 4 '11 at 20:20
@CraigN: Perhaps I`ve got a new trace now. We`ve got a kernel-crash on an R510. Dell says this might be due to a single core that went into sleep state. At what times do your ECCs occour? When there is almost nothing to do for the server? – Nils Aug 11 '11 at 19:34
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This sounds like an issue I have ran into with PE 1950's in the past. Sometimes when one updates the BIOS of a given server, it changes the supported memory list within the BIOS. Are you getting any multi bit ECC errors by any chance?

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What do you mean by "supported memory list"? – Nils Aug 4 '11 at 20:21
As far as I'm aware only Dell supplied memory is being used. The errors are single bit ECC errors. – CraigN Aug 8 '11 at 9:13
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For the most part enterprise level BIOS's have a list within them that support certain manufacturer PN's. I have seen update's knock out a certain PN and you have weird memory issues thereafter.

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What do you mean "knock out"? Do you refer to the list F10 shows on a iDRAC6? – Nils Aug 11 '11 at 19:36
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