One of our x7-2 compute nodes shows entries in the alert history like that:

Problem Status : open 
Diag Engine : fdd 1.0 
System  
Manufacturer : Oracle Corporation 
Name : Exadata X7-2 Upgrade 
Part_Number : Exadata X7-2 Upgrade 
Serial_Number : <serial> 

System Component  
Manufacturer : Oracle Corporation 
Name : ORACLE SERVER X7-2 
Part_Number : 7347596 
Serial_Number : <serial> 
Firmware_Manufacturer : Oracle Corporation 
Firmware_Version : (ILOM)4.0.4.21 
Firmware_Release : (ILOM)2018.08.20 

—————————————- 
Suspect 1 of 3 
Problem class : fault.io.intel.iio.pcie-data-link-layer-inactive 
Certainty : 80% 
Affects : /SYS/MB/NET1 
Status : faulted 

FRU  
Status : faulty 
Location : /SYS/MB/NET1 
Manufacturer : Broadcom 
Name : Ethernet Controller 
Part_Number : BCM57417 
Chassis  
Manufacturer : Oracle Corporation 
Name : ORACLE SERVER X7-2 
Part_Number : 7347596 
Serial_Number : <serial>  
—————————————- 
Suspect 2 of 3 
Problem class : fault.io.intel.iio.pcie-data-link-layer-inactive 
Certainty : 15% 
Affects : /SYS/MB/P0 
Status : faulted 

FRU  
Status : faulty 
Location : /SYS/MB/P0 
Manufacturer : Intel 
Name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8160 CPU @ 2.10GHz 
Part_Number : SR3B0 
Serial_Number : 54-018EBB6910573D72 
Chassis  
Manufacturer : Oracle Corporation 
Name : ORACLE SERVER X7-2 
Part_Number : 7347596 
Serial_Number : <serial>  
—————————————- 
Suspect 3 of 3 
Problem class : fault.io.intel.iio.pcie-data-link-layer-inactive 
Certainty : 5% 
Affects : /SYS/MB 
Status : faulted 

FRU  
Status : faulty 
Location : /SYS/MB 
Manufacturer : Oracle Corporation 
Name : ASM, MB, X7-2 
Part_Number : 7317636 
Revision : 11 
Serial_Number : <serial> 
Chassis  
Manufacturer : Oracle Corporation 
Name : ORACLE SERVER X7-2 
Part_Number : 7347596 
Serial_Number : <serial>  

After opening a MoS Service Request the engineer stated that this is a known bug in the software we’ve installed which is describe within MoS note 2411407.1.

root cause:

Due to the MoS note mentioned above this is a non-published bug (27636309) within the firmware.

Solution:

Installing a firmware equal or higher to 1.4.1 solved this issue.

Note:

Always check this issue together with Oracle support to be sure you hit this issue and you really don’t a hardware defect.