HP DL160 G5 and Win 2003 Storage Server R2

[Richie Rich]

Our server will stop responding to file service requests about once a week. The server doesn't crash and still responds to pings, but explorer crashes on Windows clients that attempt to access the file shares. Roaming profile users cannot log in. We tried to stop and restart the 'server' service, but no luck.

We had a similar problem last year at which time HP had us reinstall the OS and apply only the HP service pack rollup for this machine. A year later the problem has resurfaced.

Our local vendor recommended applying a Microsoft SP2, but not the most recent HP service releases. We applied SP2 and no problems for two weeks. Last night the machine became unresponsive again, and I had to reboot it when I got in today.

My question is this: For anyone who has experience with Storage Server 2003 on HP, given our history which choice would you make?

1) Wipe it clean and install RedHat (supported by HP)
2) Debug it through the HP storage people (who will have us reinstall the OS again = a ticking timebomb)
3) Debug it through Microsoft who might be able to use a diagnostic and figure out why this happens, but will take an entire day transfering my call around India to find an engineer with a clue.

No one has had a diagnostic to use on this so far, and windows event logs show nothing useful
We've found nothing unusual in packet traces
I've installed WEBES, not sure if that will help.

Is there a good reason NOT to install RedHat? Seems like the best option to me... But what if it is a firmware problem or whatever...

[peyrache]

hello
please post events system and application first
thanks
JYP

[Thomas Robinson]

I just started having a similar problem last week with DL100G2 Storage Server. I notice the hard drive light stays on constantly when this happens. It happened today (9/25) and last Wednesday (9/16). Nothing in the eventvwr today, but on Wednesday this event #2020 came up a couple of times before I rebooted:

The server was unable to allocate from the system paged pool because the pool was empty.

[peyrache]

hello
you need to tune page pool follow
ms article below and let me know
JYP

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/312362/fr

[Richie Rich]

There is nothing unusual in the system and application logs at all.

HP Support has reccomended Service Release and firmware updates. Unfortunately the recomended firmware update CD does not apply to my machine.

The only applications on the system are NOD32 AVI and Sonicwall CDP. I have run the machine with those apps for a year with no problems until now. Windows updates were turned off.

[peyrache]

should be also hardware issue ?

[peyrache]

the best way is to force a memory dump during
the problem in order to check what is going wrong
JYP

[Richie Rich]

Thanks, what tool should I use to force a memory dump? / who should I give it to to debug?

[peyrache]

here link of to force dump
then make it available to download
or i'll provide you a ftp pointer to depose it
i'll look into
JYP

[Thomas Robinson]

Thanks, I had made the registry entry to tune the paging pool after I first experienced the problem -- but I had not rebooted the server after I made that change until last Friday, when it started acting up again.