ASR NMI / Memory dump

[adamth0]

Dear HP forum afficionados,

I've been trying to find out if it is possible to make the Automatic Server Recovery (ASR) generate an NMI to the system in such a manner that it will cause the operating system (Windows Server 2003/2008/R2) to bugcheck.

If you add the NMICrashDump = 1 registry key on Windows 2003 (it's already there on 2008), you can use the iLO to generate an NMI to the system, which gives you a memory dump to open in WinDBG, so you can see what the cause of the hang was.

If ASR is enabled, it just seems to perform a power reset and no memory dump is generated.

According to one very, very old Compaq document, this feature used to be possible by adding some "FeatureASR" registry keys, but this document is the only source for that information.  Current documentation makes no mention of it, and most of the registry paths mentioned in the 12 year old document no longer exist.

Was this feature dropped, and if so, why?

ASR is a pain because it provides absolutely no clues as to what the nature of the hang was, so it ends up being disabled.  If it were possible to enable ASR and let the system dump memory to disk, we could benefit from the increased uptime and still have a fighting chance of performing root cause analysis.

If anyone knows what happened to this feature, or if the functionality is possible via some other means, I would be most grateful to learn of it.

Many thanks,

Adam.

[adamth0]

A case has been opened with HP support, but so far, the only suggestions I have are to set the NMICrashDump key to '1' - which is, of course, already done.