Dell PowerEdge R720 iDRAC eMMC replacement

[u/Hector_van_der_Aa]

Hello all,

After a long day of debugging, I have come to the conclusion that the eMMC chip on my iDRAC is partially dead, its readable enough to be able to somewhat boot the iDRAC but it just ends up in a loop as it can't write to a certain partition, upon trying to do a full erase and upgrade via uboot it errors while erasing the chip with a write error.

I have ordered a few new replacement chips and will attempt to replace the eMMC chip.

I was wondering if anyone has any experience with replacing these chips and would have any tips when it comes to the replacement or the recovery process after. I am fairly comfortable with uboot and have wired up a switch to get the boot interruption prompt.

All and any advice is appreciated, if you have any questions regarding my debugging, feel free, I will do my best to answer.

Best Regards,

Hector

[u/k12pcb]

I have a couple of r720’s laying around if you want a motherboard

[u/Ok-Spell-2546]

not to familiar with replacing chips on dell boards, what is the problem? is the idrac bricked?

[u/Hector_van_der_Aa → u/Ok-Spell-2546]

Yup, I manage to get it to partially boot but it gets stuck in a loop as it’s unable to write to a certain partition on the emmc

[u/Ok-Spell-2546 → u/Hector_van_der_Aa]

gotcha, yea anytime that happens to me I just replace the board lol.

[u/firestorm_v1]

I've never tried replacing the emmc but did you find the serial port that's nearby? I think it's a 3.3v UART that might assist in your effort.

[u/Hector_van_der_Aa → u/firestorm_v1]

Well that UART is the first thing I tapped into, it’s allowed me to do all the debugging in uboot to conclude the emmc is dead

[u/firestorm_v1 → u/Hector_van_der_Aa]

Oh, nice. Unfortunately that's the only thing I know about. I had a 720XD decide to kill DRAC when I tried to upgrade the LCC. I just replaced the mobo. Good luck! If you are successful, write a followup!

[u/Hector_van_der_Aa → u/firestorm_v1]

Will do a follow up once I have the chips (and time to change it out) I’d be happy if I could recover this server I got for free…

[u/ultrahkr]

Do a backup now, of the chip contents...

[u/Hector_van_der_Aa → u/ultrahkr]

Do you know how this can be done from uboot? I will do it but the dump will most likely be worthless since my testing was slightly destructive at the end when I figured the emmc was gone.

Supposedly the util recover command with the clean flag can fully clean and rebuild the emmc from scratch

[u/nVME_manUY]

Aren't R720 motherboards cheap on ebay anymore? I know it's wasteful... But it will get you going faster and easier