Sporadic network connectivity drops

[Eugene_41]

Hi,

This is a Proliant DL360 G2 with 2 NC7780 Gigabit Adapter on board running W2K Adv Server SP4 and part of 2 node cluster. One of the ports goes into a Cisco switch the other one is a cross over to another DL360 G2 (for cluster heartbeat).

Recently both ports started going down for 15-20 seconds. I could not make any correlations about when this happens - seams to be random.

Windows log shows entries like these:

HP NC7780 Gigabit Server Adapter: The network link is down. Check to make sure the network cable is properly connected.

HP NC7780 Gigabit Server Adapter: Network controller configured for 100Mb full-duplex link.

Anybody seen something similar?

Thanks,

Eugene

[Ryan Goff]

what is the duplex setting set to on the nic and on the switch?

what driver version are you using?

[Eugene_41]

>what is the duplex setting set to on the nic and on the switch?

Right now is Auto/Auto. I experimented forcing it to 100/Full and 1000/Full on both sides. It does establish link but same behavior.

> what driver version are you using?

7.103.0.0. It use to be a lower version but the upgrade made no diference.

Another thing: this system has been working for at least 1 year and there were no recent changes (hardware or software) on the configuration.

[Ryan Goff]

Try the folloing firmware updates:

System Rom:
http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/20873.html

Embedded NC7780
http://h18023.www1.hp.com/support/files/networking/us/download/23040.html

You will need a dos bootable diskette to apply the NIC firmware.

Strange that both ports are being pushed offline at the same time.

Can you try 100/half forced on both sides to see if that helps?

If the firmware updates do not help it's possible that it may be the controller itself on the systemboard that is failing.

I doubt this will help but there was a new driver released on Aug 16th, version 8.39.1.0. The driver you are using is from April 2005.

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/22931.html

[Ryan Goff]

PS: make sure if you apply these updates to update the system bios prior to updating NIC firmware.