Servers becoming slow, laggy, and unresponsive:

[Supermanpunch786]

Good morning,

 

I hope you all are well.

 

Recently, we have been experiencing a temperamental problem. Three of our servers become extremely slow and laggy, requiring us to manually restart them because we cannot remotely access or log in physically.

 

 

I have been working on this issue for a while, but it still occurs randomly. I believe it usually happens after a backup is completed. The three servers have nearly identical specifications and were purchased from the same supplier. One of them is the domain controller (DC), another is a virtual machine (VM) server that also hosts a DC as a VM, and the third is the file server.

 

 

None of our other servers encounter this problem. I have checked the event logs and cannot find anything that could be causing this issue.

 

 

I am wondering if anyone else has experienced a similar issue and what they may have done to resolve it.

[PotNoodleTech]

Not seen that, no. What backup software are you using, how much free space is left ont he C drive of he ophysical servers, etc?

[Supermanpunch786]

Backup assist and all the servers have got plenty of space left on the C drive. This started happening round about june time. But occurs once every 2 weeks on 1 of the 3 servers mentioned.

[Bedders]

Are these all bare metal servers?

Are there any BIOS or driver/firmware updates needed?

Were there any Windows Updates around that time, and if so do you get any results from googling your server make/model and the KB number(s)?

[Supermanpunch786]

Hi,

 

These aren't bare metal servers, and all drivers are up to date. The issue began occurring about two weeks after we applied the latest Windows update at the time.

 

 

It's baffling because our other servers aren't affected. We have a Dell server, an HP server (which also serves as a virtual machine (VM) server hosting a DC as a VM), and a Lenovo server that acts as our deployment server—none of these are experiencing the same problem.

 

 

The three problematic servers were purchased from the same local supplier in consecutive years between 2015 and 2017.

[tosh74]

Are the problem servers running 2019 ? There are some reported issues with KB5041578 on Server 2019.

 

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windowserver/forum/all/kb5041578-causes-windows-server-2019-to-have-very/1143cb9a-3c47-4dd6-a90b-d6a7c1a67c32

[Supermanpunch786]

Are the problem servers running 2019 ? There are some reported issues with KB5041578 on Server 2019.

 

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windowserver/forum/all/kb5041578-causes-windows-server-2019-to-have-very/1143cb9a-3c47-4dd6-a90b-d6a7c1a67c32

 

2 of them are on server 2016 and 1 of them is on server 2019.

[dmj]

Have you tried the usual things like comparing the CPU/Memory/IO/Network usage from before the issue occurred to now, and see if you can correlate that with a processID ?

[Supermanpunch786]

Hi all,

 

Coming back to this. I think I have worked out what has been causing the issue.

 

I walked in today and noticed one of the servers was slow again.

 

I managed to get in to resource manager found the following.

 

I know it is linked to powerchute. Any ideas why this is happening?

[3s-gtech]

The software is awful and bugged. Kill it if you can.

[Supermanpunch786]

The software is awful and bugged. Kill it if you can.

Thank you for the response.

 

I have killed it, but the ram usage is still high.

[PotNoodleTech]

Hi all,

 

Coming back to this. I think I have worked out what has been causing the issue.

 

I walked in today and noticed one of the servers was slow again.

 

I managed to get in to resource manager found the following.

 

I know it is linked to powerchute. Any ideas why this is happening? [ATTACH]72302[/ATTACH]

 

Powerchute is APC UPS shutdown software isn't it? Maybe try uninstalling it for now, see if it cures it.

[mavhc]

Had a similar issue with powerchute about 20 years ago, internal certificate had expired, seems it's still terrible