DL 380 G3 - Networking Problems

[Rob Leadbeater]

OK... It sounds like something may be getting confused with routing - although you should have ruled that out by disabling one of the NICs...

If you're PC is on the same subnet as the server:
Remove the default gateway from all devices, including your PC, and then try pinging the various IP addresses.
That should at least rule out any possibility of a packet being received on one interface and going out on another.

[Chris Kranz]

okay, changed this on both the server (where i've kept the setting changed for now) and my machine. obviously had to change it back to get back on here, but still having the problems...

i have a constant ping running from my machine (using fping) to multiple machines. the 3 IP address' of this machine, plus another 2 DL380's we have on the network (with teamed network cards) and a filer (again with a teamed network card). all machines are plugged into the same gigabit switch, the HP in question is the only one with problems... and they are stupidly intermittent. right now all cards are responding, 30 seconds ago the 2 internals were failing. 5 minutes ago 1 internal and the d-link were failing...

[Rob Leadbeater]

> ... on a side note, I have 2 other DL380's,
> one of them an identical build, plugged into
> the same gigabit switch, and they don't suffer
> from this problem.

That identical build wasn't done by a cloning process was it by any chance...?

I'm just wondering whether you've managed to get a duplicate MAC address on your network somewhere which is getting your switches confused - I've seen this before when cloning machines that have been configured with HP Teaming...

If you can get onto a managed switch you might want to check out its arp table to make sure that the MAC addresses are pointing to the IP addresses you're expecting...

Cheers,
Rob

[Chris Kranz]

sorry, identical build as in hardware. the machines are both windows 2003, but one is the domain controller and sql server, the other (my problem machine), is an exchange server in the making...

i had a problem with the mac address' with the machine when i first got it. i used the HP tool to team the 2 NIC cards, and when i disolved it, it crashed and left both cards with the same MAC address. A complete re-install fixed this. But again, this shouldn't be the problem as i've run the machine on 1 network card, with the other both disabled and unplugged.

[Chris Kranz]

don't you hate it when you ask everyone for advice and help, then stumble onto your own solution???

so anyway...

I noticed the arp tables on my machine weren't quite correct, so I cleared them down... I then disabled the d-link card on the server, and resetup the team on the internal NIC cards and gave it a new MAC address, separate from the ones on either card. The machine now 'seems' to be running fine and returning all pings I send to it.

I think what happened was when i setup the original teaming, it clones the MAC address of the first card, combined with plugging the network card into varying switches and trying different configurations with the switches, the ARP tables had got confused. Now that the new team has a different MAC address, it has cleaned up the ARP tables and things seem to be running fine.

I'm going to closely monitor this and make sure it stays working...

*fingers crossed*

many thanks for everyone's help, i hope my problems here help other people with these kind of issues...

[Chris Kranz]

A week later, and it looks like the problem is more a network issue.

The DL380 in question is performing well now, however the network issues are still there.

I'll randomly lose connection to the DL380 or to my NetApp Filer at any point, randomly, but solid for about 5 minutes, then it'll work again.

I've tracked this back, and during the downtime, if I fire up my arp tables from my machine (not the server) it has the wrong MAC address for the down servers, infact it has the MAC address of the gateway (Cisco PIX). If I clear my arp tables, then connection is regained immediately.

The connection loss also isn't on the server, it's on the client, and not fixed to just my machine, any machine can and will lose connection at any point.

Not even sure where to go in trouble shooting this now. I appreciate it's probably not an HP problem, thankfully I've ruled that out, but there has to be away of discovering the root of this problem?