Dell Poweredge 1900 Problems

[mickeyh080]

We have 2 Dell Poweredge 1900 servers (only 6 months ish old) which have started recently to be a pain. The two are configured one for staff and one for students with both replicating between each other. unfortunately every now an then they freeze up not responding to any remote access or even local access. Have to podge the on/off button to get any joy. since they freese the replication does not kick in on the other server hence staff or students lose access to there docs and desktop. the strange thing is that nothing weird shows up in the event logs apart from the obvious server shutdown error.

I know of another school in the area with a similar almost identical setup (since we both had the same network manager at one stage) who is experiencing the same problem, they have gone down the lets swap bits on there servers suspecting hardware stage without any joy. Wondering if anyone else has had similar Dell server problems as other servers behave fine touch wood.

[techyphil]

We've just brought our first DELL PowerEdge 1900 running Win2k8 x64. No problems as of yet, but i'd imagine its a hardware fault as the software isnt able to detect a crash and log it.

 

I've had a problem before though on our HP's where the RAID controller card had come lose somehow because they dont use screws.. instead they use those cheap bits of plastic to hold the card in place.

 

That appeared to be in fine, yet the system would just freeze randomly. Nothing was in the event log, but the HP software that came pre-installed picked it up once out of the 3-4 times it'd happened. After securing that a bit more, everything was working absolutly fine.

[FN-GM]

We have 4 Dell 2900's and 2 1900's the only think on one 2900 the raid card decided to have a fit.

 

touch wood nothing major

[SYNACK]

Obvious question but have you tried upgrading all of the servers and raid cards firmware, including the hard drive firmware if avalible?

[tech_guy]

We've had SCSI cards popping in our Dell SQL server thanks to the cheap plastic retaining clip(s).

[speckytecky]

We have 2 Dell Poweredge 1900 servers (only 6 months ish old)

 

Apologies if it's an obvious question but what do Dell server support say?

[Slartibartfast]

Both sites use DFS R2 replication. Have a look at:

John Howard : DFS Namespace Active Directory blob size in Server 2003 R2 (but I don't think there are enough links for this to be an issue)

 

I'd be very surprised if this was anything to do with the RAID controllers - the RAID configuration (and hardware) differs between sites.

 

Have you created a DFS diagnostic report?

Edited May 16, 2008 by Slartibartfast

[mickeyh080]

After consulting other school they have gone through dell support upgrading the firmware and various drivers with no joy. Also found out that we don't have exact models they have rack mount 2950s we are using tower 1900s which makes the problem even more confusing.

 

Running DFS diagnostics at present although suspect will take some time.

[stokesfc]

Out of interest what Virus product are you using?

[mickeyh080]

DFS Diagnostic highlights one server okay and one in error but fails to complete the report just stays on the loading screen.

 

Using Symantec Anti Virus.

 

Just to add insult local authority seem to have blocked the Edugeek.net website for school access, have lodged a complaint.

[gshaw]

Run a MemTest as well if all else fails, dodgy RAM leads to some weird errors... although I'd guess you'd have seen a BSOD by now if it was that, worth a try anyway though for peace of mind.

[Cragzman]

Hallo all!

 

I work with mickeyh080. Just an update relating to the Dell Poweredge 1900 server.

 

Quite recently we have had BSOD at random occasions. The event viewer shows the same error. (System Error - (102) Event code 1003.)

 

Used the Windows Debug thingy and found that SYMEVENT.SYS (a symantec driver) is causing a problem. Found that it was linked to Symantec Live Update and then I updated SYMEVENT. The server seems to be behaving at the mo.

 

But im not sure if SYMEVENT is to blame for the freezing and not being able to log on via remote desktop. Just have to wait and see methinks.