Tags:
Microsoft, Small Business Server, 2003, Exchange, SQL 2000, HP, Proliant, ML350, 6x drives (2x mirrored, 4x raid5), 3gb Ram,
We've recently built a new SBS2003 server on new hardware and all was fiine for a month. However just in the last few days the server has hung 3 times with no apparant cause. The first two hangs happened at about the same time (give or take 25 minutes) which made me suspect a scheduled task was causing this.
The only thing to run at that time was a backup from another server to a drive on this SBS server. (logic would say that if this was the case then sure it may slow the network connectivity down to the SBS server, but shouldn't hang the SBS server as its not processing anything)
I changed this anyway just to rule it out and surprisingly it didn't occur again that day... however the following day the sbs server hung again, this time in the middle of the day when there aren't any major tasks scheduled. Restarting seems to fix the problem.
On all occasions nothing has been noted in the event logs that would indicate a problem. Access toi the server via mstsc is impossible when it hangs as is trying to connect to it using the server console (on the console it allows you to move the mouse around however the screen stays locked. Pressing ctrl alt del takes away the locked screen but then doesn't return with a window to type in a password)
Looking at the server it doesn't appear to be doing anything (ie hard drives aren't whirring) It has two dual cores and our environment doesn't have any server intensive tasks hosted on this box.
Also I have not installed any patches or additional software on this server for over two weeks.
I'm suspecting at this point that its faulty hardware, although what is a bit difficult to say. Because of the environment I'm not able to take this server offline either.
Can anyone suggest some monitoring tools that will help diagnose this problem?
