Memory sparing warning message - Servers

Resolving The Problem

Source

RETAIN tip: H19670

Symptom

BladeCenter HS21 (Type 8853), System x3550, and System x3650 do not display any warnings or error messages when only one of the memory branches is correctly populated for Memory Sparing.

This leaves an exposure of no sparing on the Memory branch that cannot be configured for Memory Sparing.

Affected configurations

The system may be any of the following IBM servers:

• BladeCenter HS21, type 8853, any model
• System x3550, type 7978, any model
• System x3650, type 7979, any model

This tip is not option specific.

This tip is not software specific.

Workaround

Populate memory configuration correctly for both memory branches.

Additional information

All systems will try to configure the users selected memory configuration through the Setup Configuration Utility. If only one of memory branches is configured for Memory Sparing, the system will enable Memory Sparing on that one branch and will not POST any warning or error message for Memory Sparing not enabled on the other branch.

To avoid the symptoms, configure the memory correctly in both branches allowing the system to enable Memory Sparing on all installed memory in the system. An example of enabling Sparing would be to have at least two pairs of DIMMs in branch 0 and two pairs of DIMMs in branch 1. This allows one DIMM to be used as spare memory in each branch of the memory.