This symptoms of this problem are as following:
Users arrive in the morning and are unable to use any server based resources.
Server does not respond to RDP, ping ect.
Server console has a blank (black) screen.
Server is powered on with some drive activity.
Hard reboot is necessary.
Checking the event logs is fruitless. The usefull entries are eventlog stamps saying "Previous system shutdown was unexpected." These usually happen in the late evening or early morning.
There are no log entries after the time the event logs says the server shut down unexpectedly.
Upon hard reboot, if I don't have any file corruption from the hard reboot, the machine is fine.
The backup does not finish. Or does not start at all.
This is happening approximately every couple of weeks.
Server Hardware:
SuperMicro Super Server 6025b-t
Board Model X7DBE Bios revison 1.3c
Dual Intel Xeon 5140 @ 2.4Ghz
2GB of ECC RAM
Intel SATA on board RAID controller
System Partition configured as RAID 1
Data Partition configured as RAID 5
1 USB external drive used for backups
1 USB connected to APC battery backup
Software Information:
Windows Small Business Server 2003 SP2
Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2
SQL Server 2005
ISA Server 2004 (configured not to write to SQL database)
Symantec Backup Exec 11D 6235 SP2
Trend Micro Client Server Messaging Suite V3.6
MozyPro Online Backup
Peachtree Premium Accounting 2005
APC Powerchute Business Edition
Additional comments:
This problem happens so intermitantly that it is difficult to troubleshoot. I have had similar issues with other clients' servers. On one server, I disabled the Trend Micro Realtime Client, and the problem seems to have stopped. I have done the same in this instance with no improvement. I don't like to hard reset the server. This morning I had corruption in the Active Directory database that I had to repair, and the client was down for three hours. Anyone that has any information that could be useful please help.
Start Free Trial
