ML350G4 Storage Server Hanging with no event log

[Ashok K Gurung]

Hi

We bought ML350G4 server last year and from the very first day when we try to set up this server we are having dramas (miss-configuration, wrong item included to server hanging without any logs in even viewer). Now this server just keeps hanging without any trace. I have been speaking to HP and they have replaced motherboard and did all the testing they know of and found no error on hardware sides... now we do not know what to do with this server and unfortunately this is one of our main file servers. We will really appreciate if any one could suggest some thing here.

We are using RAID 1 & 5 (2*36 GB & 6 * 146GB) on Smart Array 642(this is where we initially had a problem). As this card only has single channel internally so we have to use external cable to configure RAID 1 & 5.

Changes we did with this server are; we have added one Intel Pro 100 NIC to connect to backup network, veritas remote agents and lots of user files saved. We have around 250 client computer but they will not be connecting to this server all the time. We thought this extra NIC might be giving us trouble and we removed it, still we were getting same problem so we have left as it is.

Some time every couple of days and sometime in every half day server decides itself to just hang on, disconnecting every one. When this happens we just see green screen on server and we have to forcefully shutdown the server and restart the server. After restart it works without any problem.. Any suggestion will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

[Igor Karasik]

Do you have last server firmware ? (server BIOS, SmartArray firmware, SCSI drives firmware)
Do you have last Proliant support pack?
Which OS?
Do you have ASR enabled?
Do you already tried to replace server RAM?

[Ashok K Gurung]

Do you have last server firmware ? (server BIOS, SmartArray firmware, SCSI drives firmware)
:- Yes we did in accordance to HP Tech support.

Do you have last Proliant support pack?
:- Yes
Which OS?
:- windows 2003 Server
Do you have ASR enabled?
:- I am sorry what does this mean?
Do you already tried to replace server RAM?
:- No. HP Tech support haven't offered that as we have care pack with this server so we try not to play with the system...

Thank you

[Igor Karasik]

Do you have ASR enabled?
:- I am sorry what does this mean?

ASR - Automatic Server Recovery
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&objectID=PSD_CN0416W

Try to disable ASR (two ways: in the BIOS or in HP system management homepage -> Recovery -> Autorecovery -> Status set to Disabled)
When ASR disabled you PROBABLY will have blue screen and STOP error message - with STOP error number you can troubleshoot problem.

>>Do you already tried to replace server RAM?
:- No. HP Tech support haven't offered that as we have care pack with this server so we try not to play with the system...

Ask your hardware support provider to replace RAM

Ideal situation - if your hardware support provider have identical ML350 G4 server you can swap SCSI drives between your "problematic" server and new server and see what happens. In such way you will see if problem is hardware related (new server with your drives work without problem) or software related (new server with your drives hanging)....

[Ashok K Gurung]

Thank you for your reply again,

Problem with our server till now is it is not giving blue screen, it just stops responding and just hangs on there(with green screen not blue screen). it doesn't do anything we have to forcefully restart the server.

Any way we will try your suggestion as it might give us information. With regards asking support vendor(HP) for replacement server, we are not sure how far they will go about doing that. we have 4 hrs 24/7 support agreement with them some time we get call back after two or three days.. which itself is hopeless....

Thank you for that we will try hp(support vendor) see they say.

[Ashok K Gurung]

Thank you for your reply again,

Problem with our server till now is it is not giving blue screen, it just stops responding and just hangs on there(with green screen not blue screen). it doesn't do anything we have to forcefully restart the server.

Any way we will try your suggestion as it might give us information. With regards asking support vendor(HP) for replacement server, we are not sure how far they will go about doing that. we have 4 hrs 24/7 support agreement with them some time we get call back after two or three days.. which itself is hopeless....

Thank you for that we will try hp(support vendor) see what they say.

[Ashok K Gurung]

Hi

We had called HP Support and they called us back after 48hrs instead of 4hrs(as per support agreement). They are pretty much sure that, server hanging is nothing to do with hardware as hardware scanning doesn't show any problem. They said it might be software problem. Any way we ask them to change RAM see how will it go...

we were wondering if any one know good software we can use to test this server. we will really appreciate if you advice us.

Thank you