HP Proliant ML110 G6 Breaks down offen

[Peter Ahlgren]

Hey

I have just installed a brand new HP ML110 G6 server with 10 Gb og Ram.
I have intalled Small Business Server 2011 standard on the server.
My problem is that one ore two times pr every 24 hours, the server just stop responding.
I cannot get a RDP session to the server. When i try to connect by the ILo interface is sayes that the server is in standby mode.

When this issue occur the harddrive led is lightning all the time. The only thing i can do is to turn off the power to the server and start it again. In the Eventviewer i can see the when this issue is happening i got an Kernel Power event error. But nothing else.

The server is running fine, and is it not running dry from memmory.
I have limited the use of memmory on the SQL server instance.
And i have also upgraded the server to the latest firmware.

Iss there anyone that know how to resolve this issue, ore maybe some off you have seen this behaviour before.

Best Regards
Peter

[Johan Guldmyr]

Hey, some ideas..

The Easy Setup CD has some diagnostics on it, would you be able to try to run those?
There is also a CD called memtest86 that you can boot on and run some quite good memory tests.

[Anthony Halvorson]

I've had this problem before, but not on your particular server. My memory is a little foggy going back that far, but I think my issue was with the power. Either my power supply was acting up or it just couldn't sustain enough power for everything to run with high demand. And yes, when it froze up, I couldn't do anything and the HDD light would stay on.

[Michael A. McKenney]

Put on the latest firmware and drivers. You can download memtest86 ISO and test the RAM.

[Peter Ahlgren]

Hey again

I will try to exchange the psu to a new one.
Is there any idea in installing the PSP Pack for the ML110 G7 server, onto this ML110 G6 server.

I have tryed to start the psp pack, hp update manger, and it highlights many drviers, for installation onto the ml110 g6 server. So it semms like that the psppack for g7 server is compatibel with the g6 server, is this true?

[Peter Ahlgren]

Hey again

I have also posted a thread on Microsoft Technet forum, and there is another person, that have the exact same problem as me. Here is what he wrote:
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I have the exact same fault... we bought an ML110 G6 about 2 months ago and eventually installed it for our customer 3 weeks ago. It is an ML110 G6 with SBS 2008 and 6GB RAM, also a Smart Array P212 disk controller.

Within a day the server had hung and we had to reset it, no help in the event log. By the next day the same had happened overnight. We spoke to HP and ran various diagnostics (HP Offline Insight Diagnostics) looping for days but no errors and no crash - while booted off the HP CD.

If you change the power settings when in windows so the screen stays on you will see nothing except the mouse stops responding... infact everything stops but there is nothing interesting happening.

After getting nowhere with HP we bought a replacment ML110 G6 and installed the same RAM and storage controller and guess what.... same problem.

I took the new server we bought back to our office and with just the 1GB of RAM it shipped with and the single 250GB SATA disk installed installed Server 2008 R2 and the latest HP drivers/firmware. It ran completely stable... we put in the 3x 2GB memory modules in (a configuration supported by HP) and the thing strated crashing again.

Also found out that if you load up the CPU it crashes very much faster... like 5 mins. It doesn't do this with a single 2GB memory module, but of the 3 2GB modules we have any work fine on their own. We got entirely new RAM from HP (same part number but different manufacturer) and still with 4GB or more RAM installed it crashes quickly... especially under load.

I used the free tool LinX which is a frontend for Intel's Linpack Stability Test program to load up the server (CPU and Memory stress tool) and it just falls over in the same way but in a few minutes.

HP keep saying have you tried the latest firmware like parrots which isn't helpful. Since this appears to be the same in SBS 2008 (Windows Server 2008 x64) and a base Windows Server 2008 R2 but doesn't happen booted off the HP Easy Start CD (a linux boot disk) It's got to be a windows / driver issue but I have been left stumped and now with 2 servers with the same fault despite slightly different OS's.

-------------------------------------------

I think that HP is not very glad fore giving out usefuel support on this issue.
If HP moderator read this, i will encourge HP to thake some king of action in this matter. I have been selling HP product fore years but i am very disapointed in there support manners in this case.

Some one please help

[Michael A. McKenney]

Did you try taking the server back to SBS 2008? Could it be 2011 causing the glitch with driver support. HP does want latest firmware and drivers installed.

Do you have the server on a UPS? Did you test the UPS for a bad battery? Do you have the server on its own circuit?

[Johan Guldmyr]

I would suggest that you call HP Support and direct them to this thread then, maybe that would help them understand your issue.

Sometimes you have to be quite forceful to get them to help you out when it's something extra 'tricky' going on. It might be worth asking for an escalation or something like that.

As for something a bit more productive..

This is a bit time consuming, but if you have the possibility/time, one idea would be to try another supported OS (RHEL, SUSE or Win2k3 if the problem is on SBS2011 and Win2k8) and try to reproduce the issue there.

[rpmsys]

Peter:

Followed you from Microsoft Technet, as I posted there I have ML110 G6 12GB Ram I have stayed for up to 13 days, but recently after some Windows updates only 36 hours. We are running SBS 2011, this last time user just power cycled server, prior hang I was able to get into ILO but still had to do hard reset. Don't recal it happening during the day but usually in the middle of night or Sunday afternoon. Only have 5 users, so not too much CPU Load. I will be placing a HP Support Call as HP Partner tomorrow to log issue maybe request a motherboard replace or something, really annoying.

Rolando

[Peter Ahlgren]

Hey again

I think and hope now that my problem is solved. My server have now been online for 3 hole dayes now.
Before it restarted several times a day.

I have call a local HP Service Provider, and ordred them to replace powersupply, and mainboard, on the HP Warranty program.
And now the server is working just fine, with the 10GB of ram.

So i think that there could be some memmory issues on some off the mainboard, in this product line.

I hope that my solution can bennefit, some off you that also have the problem.

Best regards Peter