Dissolving NIC Teaming destroys servers

[roxyboby]

hi Lenny,
I had something of a similar problem with one of my clients DL580 G2 server running exchange 2000 which I then upgraded to windows 2003 and exchange 2003. In addition to the above said issues, I also had issues of the server rebooting every once in a while and dumping something. After days of struggle I sent a dump to HP's microsoft support and they said that we had a version on Open File Manager which was not compatible with win 2003. Someone had loaded Open file managed on the windows 2000 which I failed to notice and when I upgraded that server to windows 2003 with exchange 2003 running all hell broke loose. Incidentally we have other servers running the same version of open file manager running and they all work fine. It's only when the Exchange 2003 component comes in that they go mad. So what I am trying to tell you here is that you might just have the same issues that I had. Check and see if you have any incompatible programs on your server and take them off.

[Lenny Davis]

The NIC teaming software (I suspect) has just completely destroyed another DL360 G2 server. The server in question worked in an HP 2524 switch but wouldn't ping in an 2848 switch (both switches have latest frmware). As per the advice given above I upgraded the NIC firmware in both NICs from 2.4 to 2.19 (strange version numbering here) hoping the server would then respond in the 2848 switch but it wouldn't. Worked back in the 2524 switch for a while then just stopped responding, even after a couple of reboots. After a night of being down,, the server won't boot at all now, regardless of what didks are in there, and won't boot from the smartstart CD either. Just hangs after the Array Config messages have been displayed. Exactly the same symptoms as the other server it destroyed. I strongly suspect the NIC firmware has been sucked out, like the other server that failed and this is why it won't boot. On the other server I eventually managed to get into the BIOS to see the NIC's were either disabled or gave a MAC address of 00000000000000. Can't get that far on this server whatever I try though.

Very dodgy 7.90 Insight Maanagement software. Didn't even have the chance to upgrade to 7.91.

Lenny

[Lenny Davis]

Motherboard swapped out on 2nd server and all fine now. No Broadcom card in Device Manager either, just 2 HP NC7780 NICS as I would expect, and this is using the same disks too. Maybe the NIC teaming software, or even just the NIC software in general that comes with PSP7.90 just highlighted hardware faults that we didn't know about, although I would be surprised if this was the case, but maybe it's true.

Interesting...

Lenny