Changing the LCD Display on Dell PowerEdge 2650
Mar 10th, 2004 by Alex
You have a rack full of servers. Lots of noise, heat, blinking lights and LEDs. Without decent labeling, you’d be seriously lost. Sharpie is good, but tends to be rather permanent. What happens when you change a machine’s name/purpose? Adhesive labels fall off, especially with all the forced air being circulated in data centers.
The people at Dell have figured it out for us, and integrated the solution into their PowerEdge 2650 series.
The LCD on the PowerEdge 2650 series spits out warnings and errors concerning the underlying hardware conditions. When all is well, the Dell logo and model name can be seen.
DELL
PE 2650
As pretty as the pixelated Dell logo is, another option is to label your servers using this LCD. While this procedure is no doubt documented somewhere, our documentation got relocated somewhere shortly after delivery. We still haven’t found it. So here’s how to do it.
- During boot, press F2 to enter BIOS setup. Scroll down to “Embedded Server Management” and press Enter.
- Select “Front-Panel LCD Options” and use your left and right arrow keys to select “User-Defined String” from the available options (the other options being “Default” and “None”).
- Select “User-Defined LCD String: Line 1″ and type in up to five alphanumeric characters. Press Enter.
- Select “User-Defined LCD String: Line 2″ and type in up to fifteen alphanumeric characters. Press Enter.
- Escape out of the setup, making sure to Save Changes. After a reboot, you’ll bask in the neon blue glow of your newly customized LCD marked servers.
Your user-defined settings don’t override the purpose of the LCD. You’ll still be shown warnings when things aren’t well. The LCD will cycle between the errors and your labeling.
Note: This assumes Dell 2650, BIOS Revision A17. Now the functionality has been in the 2650 BIOS for a while (probably since the beginning), but I can’t attest to it. The procedure for the 6650 is quite similar, if not identical.
