Battery reconditioning

Over time, or if a battery module has been discharged repeatedly, the battery module capacity reading becomes less and less accurate without periodic reconditioning.

During battery reconditioning, the system recalibrates the battery capacity reading by fully discharging the battery and then fully recharging it.

Prerequisites

Important: The entire reconditioning process can take up to 24 hours. During this time, battery redundancy is lost for approximately 4 hours. Therefore, the following conditions are prerequisites for battery reconditioning:

Two power supply units must be installed.
Two battery modules must be installed.
The second battery module must not be currently undergoing reconditioning.
Neither battery module can be in an error state.
A software upgrade must not be in progress.

When to perform the battery reconditioning procedure

When the system determines that battery reconditioning is necessary to restore the precision of the capacity reading, the storage enclosure management event log displays the message Battery maintenance discharge cycle required. You can also check the status of the batteries by entering the lsenclosurebattery command-line interface (CLI) command. If reconditioning is needed, the recondition_needed value in the command output is yes.

Initiating battery reconditioning

You can initiate the battery reconditioning process from the storage enclosure management GUI, or from the storage enclosure CLI.

From the management GUI, click the Battery maintenance discharge cycle required event message and follow the fix procedure.
From the command-line interface (CLI), use the chenclosureslot command. For example, to initiate battery reconditioning on battery module 1, enter chenclosureslot -battery -slot 1 -recondition on.

You can then confirm that the process has begun successfully.

In the management event log, the message Battery maintenance discharge cycle started is displayed.
From the CLI, enter the lsenclosurebattery command. In the resulting output, the charging_status field is reconditioning and the recondition_needed value is no.

Completing battery reconditioning

If the reconditioning process completes successfully, the event log displays the message Battery maintenance discharge cycle complete.
If the reconditioning process fails, the event log displays the message Battery maintenance discharge cycle required, and the detailed event ID text reads Battery failed to calibrate during maintenance discharge cycle.
If the reconditioning process fails, perform the following steps:
1. Rerun battery reconditioning, using the battery reconditioning failed fix procedure.
2. If battery reconditioning fails a second time, contact IBM® support.
  A battery should not be replaced due to repeated battery reconditioning failures, without further investigation. IBM support will diagnose and replace the battery if needed. If a battery is failing due to another hardware issue that is not battery reconditioning-related, then the battery should be replaced.