topic FAS2520 NVRAM Battery in ONTAP Hardware

FAS2520 NVRAM Battery

RichardParry — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 10:32:39 GMT

Hi, I recently bought what I thought was a good deal on 2x FAS2520's with dual controllers and 2x DS2246 Shelves, all drives fully populated with 900GB SAS. I bought these purely for learning ONTAP. They had been wiped by the company I bought them from when they were last used about a year ago.

Both FAS2520's pause on boot-up (I'm connecting via a console cable) saying the NVRAM battery is low. It asks to validate the boot by pressing "C", and then acknowledging that a power failure could cause data loss. If confirm this it tries to boot but says boot is prohibited.

I can still boot, but not the "option 1", but instead only option 2 works. Of course this is no good and whilst it boots into ONTAP it won't load any settings etc.

It appears the NVRAM battery on all 4 nodes is dead. I've checked the manufacturing date on the batteries and it says 2016 on the one pair and 2017 on the other pair.

I've had a look online for the part code on the battery - It's written as NetApp 271-00029 REV C1, but I cannot find anything. There's one or two eBay listings, for "used" batteries, for silly money, but considering the 2016/2017 batteries in these units have all gone bad now then I would only want to buy brand new batteries.

I completely appreciate these are going end of support end of April this year, but they are still a great learning tool.

Is there a different/newer battery code that can be used, or perhaps a 3rd party battery which is suitable? It's a very specialist battery, with a special battery connector, so I suspect there's nothing alternative "off the shelf".

Any ideas please?

Re: FAS2520 NVRAM Battery

jcolonfzenpr — Sat, 06 Mar 2021 17:53:32 GMT

Is there any fault led on?

maybe its necessary to give the battery enough time to charge.

Can you run the following from the SP prompt?

To access the SP CLI from the serial console, press Ctrl-G at the prompt.

SP node> priv set diag; system fru led show 0

SP node> system sensors

SP node> system battery show

References:

https://library.netapp.com/ecmdocs/ECMP1196798/html/GUID-2B58A4EB-3D94-468F-A67F-4D4988C68A28.html#:~:text=To%20access%20the%20SP%20CLI,D%20and%20then%20press%20Enter.

Re: FAS2520 NVRAM Battery

RichardParry — Sun, 07 Mar 2021 15:00:18 GMT

Thanks for the reply. I left the SAN on overnight and it seems it has now recharged the battery and it now boots properly - It hadn't been used for a year so it must have been flat a s a pancake. It's a shame though it doesn't recognise it as low but charging - instead prevents ONTAP booting altogether.

I've included some outputs below if you would kindly have a look - to me this looks ok though.

SP SAN1*> system sensors
Sensor Name | Current | Unit | Status | LCR | LNC | UNC | UCR
-----------------+------------+------------+------------+-----------+----------- +-----------+-----------
CPU0_Temp_Margin | -71.000 | degrees C | ok | na | na | -5.000 | 0.000
In_Flow_Temp | 22.000 | degrees C | ok | 0.000 | 10.000 | 75.000 | 80.000
Out_Flow_Temp | 35.000 | degrees C | ok | 0.000 | 10.000 | 87.000 | 92.000
Memory_Hot | 0x0 | discrete | Deasserted | na | na | na | na
CPU_Hot | 0x0 | discrete | Deasserted | na | na | na | na
CPU_Cat_Error | 0x0 | discrete | Deasserted | na | na | na | na
CPU_Therm_Trip | 0x0 | discrete | Deasserted | na | na | na | na
CPU_VCC | 0.902 | Volts | ok | 0.708 | 0.747 | 1.348 | 1.426
CPU_1.05V | 1.057 | Volts | ok | 0.892 | 0.941 | 1.154 | 1.203
CPU_VTT | 1.077 | Volts | ok | 0.931 | 0.989 | 1.213 | 1.261
LM56_Temp | 33.000 | degrees C | ok | 0.000 | 10.000 | 72.000 | 77.000
CPU_1.5V | 1.494 | Volts | ok | 1.271 | 1.348 | 1.649 | 1.727
1G_1.0V | 0.999 | Volts | ok | 0.854 | 0.902 | 1.096 | 1.154
X540_0.8V | 0.786 | Volts | ok | 0.689 | 0.728 | 0.873 | 0.912
X540_0.67V | 0.660 | Volts | ok | 0.572 | 0.611 | 0.728 | 0.766
USB_5.0V | 4.957 | Volts | ok | 4.253 | 4.495 | 5.492 | 5.759
PCH_3.3V | 3.323 | Volts | ok | 2.798 | 2.973 | 3.625 | 3.800
SASS_1.0V | 0.989 | Volts | ok | 0.854 | 0.902 | 1.096 | 1.145
SASS_1.2V | 1.213 | Volts | ok | 1.018 | 1.077 | 1.319 | 1.377
IB_1.2V | 1.203 | Volts | ok | 1.018 | 1.077 | 1.319 | 1.377
STBY_1.2V | 1.193 | Volts | ok | 1.018 | 1.077 | 1.319 | 1.377
STBY_1.5V | 1.484 | Volts | ok | 1.280 | 1.358 | 1.649 | 1.727
STBY_1.8V | 1.794 | Volts | ok | 1.533 | 1.620 | 1.979 | 2.066
STBY_5.0V | 4.933 | Volts | ok | 4.253 | 4.495 | 5.492 | 5.759
PSU1_Fault | 0x0 | discrete | Deasserted | na | na | na | na
PSU1_Present | 0x0 | discrete | Present | na | na | na | na
PSU2_Fault | 0x0 | discrete | Deasserted | na | na | na | na
PSU2_Present | 0x0 | discrete | Present | na | na | na | na
AC_Power_Fail | 0x0 | discrete | Deasserted | na | na | na | na
Power_SeqBootErr | 0x0 | discrete | Deasserted | na | na | na | na
Power_Good | 0x0 | discrete | Asserted | na | na | na | na
Power_Proc_OK | 0x0 | discrete | Asserted | na | na | na | na
Bat_1.5V | 1.494 | Volts | ok | 1.280 | 1.348 | 1.649 | 1.727
Bat_3.0V | 2.860 | Volts | ok | 2.545 | 2.703 | 3.504 | 3.575
Bat_8.0V | 8.100 | Volts | ok | 6.000 | 6.600 | 8.600 | 8.700
Bat_Curr | 0.000 | Amps | ok | na | na | 0.800 | 0.900
Bat_Capacity | 2.560 | Amps*hour | ok | na | na | na | na
Bat_Run_Time | 164.000 | hour | ok | 76.000 | 78.000 | na | na
Bat_Temp | 18.000 | degrees C | ok | 0.000 | 10.000 | 55.000 | 64.000
Charger_Curr | 0.000 | Amps | ok | na | na | 2.200 | 2.300
Charger_Cycles | 14.000 | cycles | ok | na | na | 250.000 | 251.000
Charger_Volt | 8.200 | Volts | ok | na | na | 8.600 | 8.700
System_FW_Status | 0x0 | discrete | 0x2f | na | na | na | na
Controller_Fault | 0x0 | discrete | Deasserted | na | na | na | na
System_Watchdog | 0x0 | discrete | | na | na | na | na
LkWrench_Port_Up | 0x0 | discrete | Enabled | na | na | na | na
Wrench_Port_Up | 0x0 | discrete | Enabled | na | na | na | na

SP SAN1*> system battery show

chemistry : LION
device-name : bq20z80
expected-load-mw : 133
id : 27100029
manufacturer : Nexergy
manufacturer-date : 12/2/2014
rev_cell : 0x0000
rev_firmware : 0x0210
rev_hardware : 0x00a3
TI_fw_version : 0x0110
TI_hw_version : 0xa2
serial : 0x6877
status : ready

Re: FAS2520 NVRAM Battery

jcolonfzenpr — Sun, 07 Mar 2021 23:57:39 GMT

yes, it look ok.

Take a look to the NetApp university if you want to learn more.

https://netapp.sabacloud.com/

When you get partner level you can have access the Netapp Hands-on Labs. Good environment for gaining more knowledge

https://labondemand.netapp.com/

Hand-on Lab Podcast

https://whyistheinternetbroken.wordpress.com/2020/01/10/ep223-netapp-hol/

Hope this helps!