Proliant DL380 G3 Server - Connectivity Issues

[Jeff McCormick]

I have Proliant DL380 Server, I have loaded it up with the smart start CD and I am using it for intranet server. The I can access the intranet on it just fine and everything will be running great. Then all of sudden I start getting pages not displayed errors. So I try and ping the intranet server but I get the requests timeouts. So I put a continues ping to server. I found that if I go to the server and bring up a command prompt and Ping out to any computer on the network, and at the exact time I do this, the computer where I had the continuous ping to server starts working, I get replys back and I try the intranet and it works fine again. Its almost like the server goes to sleep and by pinging it wakes it up. There are two Nic cards in this server and I tried using both of them and same thing happen s. I checked the event viewer and I am not getting any errors. I tried reloading the nic drivers with latest drivers. I next step before I try reloading it was to try 3com NIC card. Then if that don't work, I will probably try to reload it.

I was hoping maybe this might be know issue or perhaps anyone might know what the problem is or have any ideas how to fix it.

Thanks

[Martin Breidenbach]

I haven't seen this problem.

Did you already try the latest drivers (proliant support pack) ?

[Jeff McCormick]

Only compaq support pack I have installed is what came with the server. I have downloaded new nic drivers from the website though.

[Paul Slater_4]

Force duplex speed. Set the nic speed and duplex to 100/Full (or what the switch can handle). Have had this problem with newer switches.

[Jeff McCormick]

Thanks, but I have already done that already and there has been no change.

[Chris Rice_1]

Have you setup a virtual team. You can do this via the HP NIC teaming software. I set all of my servers to use a virtual team. I also set them to fail on fault with a speed of 100 mb full duplex. Try doing this and let us know how it goes.

Good Luck,
Chris

[Jeff McCormick]

That I haven't tried yet. Now if I can figure out how to do it.

Thanks,
I will try that today.

[Jim French]

Have you checked the NIC card properties for the new Power Saving option? This option is not always available but I believe the Compaq embedded NICS have it. Open the properties of your connection > choose configure under the card at top > go to the last tab 'Power Management' and uncheck the option to allow the computer to turn this device off. If this option if there it will be checked by default. This should not be your issue though, any network traffic in or out should wake up the connection. If it fixes your issue definately update the drivers anyway. \
Good luck

[Olivier Drouin]

it looks like either a duplex problem or another machine tries to use the same ip address.
I know you told you check for duplex so I'd bet on the duplicate ip.

What OS do you use ? do you see something in syslog ?

[Jeff McCormick]

Okay, heres the new scoop. I did try the different IP. Didn't make any difference. I talked with HP tech support and they sent me a new motherboard. I put it in and still no difference. I decided to reload everything. After everything was loaded I started getting more concrete errors. I would reboot the system and It would take like 5 minutes for the network icon to show connection in the system tray. Then I would get event error messages popup saying my services failed. All by ISS services hang on starting. The SMTP,Web publishing and FTP. Then I would reboot again and the network icon would come up right away and it all services would work. But would work about 1 out of 5 times I would reboot. So I finally decided to disable both the onboard NICs and put in a 3COM 10/100 card. The errors went away and the intranet doesnt seem to have problem anymore. I think its kinda sad that I have two intergrated NIC and I can't use them. Do you think maybe I just got another bad motherboard or do you think there is something wrong with NICs or drivers for them that just isn't noticble except maybe in my configuration.

Any Idea out there?

Thanks
Jeff McCormick