Windows servers falling over

Liquidfox

Liquidfox

Liquidfox

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Morning all,

We've come in this morning to find a bunch of our servers hung, all running on various versions of ESXi and varying versions of Windows from 2008 to 2012R2.

It must be an update, and we're currently finding out which one. Anyone else come across this?

EDIT: We've narrowed it down to an AVG program update, not sure why it's only affecting virtual servers though?
 
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I echo the sentiments above. I've never seen a server with auto updates turned on for good reason.
 
You are not the only one. We had 6 servers this morning with exactly the same issue. These were not virtual servers tho! Just physical Server 2008 R2.

Symptoms:
- users could not use any shares or log-in to their machines
- we couldn't LogMeIn to servers remotely as it kept disconnecting (first stuck on "Verify Identity" - then connection disconnected)
- we couldn't log-in using RDP as it would connect but only black screen available
- when physically accessed server - there was just black screen - no video output!

Only fix was to hard restart the server. Once server was restarted all worked fine. As a precaution we un-installed AVG.

AVG so far is almost impossible to track down!
Anybody else having similar issues?
 
No reason not to use it aslong as you've properly tested it before putting it on a live system and likewise tested any updates before rolling them to live systems.

EDIT: That said depending on what your actually using the server for I can't see why you'd use AVG in a lot of cases but each to their own.
 
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guildmage said:
You are not the only one. We had 6 servers this morning with exactly the same issue. These were not virtual servers tho! Just physical Server 2008 R2.

Symptoms:
- users could not use any shares or log-in to their machines
- we couldn't LogMeIn to servers remotely as it kept disconnecting (first stuck on "Verify Identity" - then connection disconnected)
- we couldn't log-in using RDP as it would connect but only black screen available
- when physically accessed server - there was just black screen - no video output!

Only fix was to hard restart the server. Once server was restarted all worked fine. As a precaution we un-installed AVG.

AVG so far is almost impossible to track down!
Anybody else having similar issues?
Click to expand...

Yes I had this on an SBS2011 box on Wednesday. Exactly the same symtpoms and also AVG Business Server / Admin Server.

Had to do a hard restart which goosed the Exchange Server and needed a restore from backup.
 
Was your fix to simply remove AVG Business Edition or did you remove AVG Admin Server too?

We have un-installed AVG Busness Edition from those 6 affected servers, but we kept AVG Admin Server on them. Fingers crossed, so far so good. We also haven't got any information from AVG regarding this issue :(

All-in-all AVG has been good to us for past few years. We used it on quite a number of machines (servers, PCs, etc...) I cannot say it was stress free, but overall it's been working OK. Until, last week... issues with AVG Cloud Care not licencing properly, issues with machines not booting up with Trustee Rapport bricking machines and now this issue bricking the servers!

I'm going to breathe fire over our account manager if I can only get to him (sic)
 
They're both still installed at the moment. It came back up after a hard restart minus exchange and I didn't join the dots until I saw this thread.

I've also had a hard couple of weeks with AVG re the Cloudcare and the Trusteer debacle.
 
Well our servers after this hung/crash also come up fine and worked fine for around 24 hours. Next day we had a phone call from customers they can't do nothing and the same issue re-appeared - that's why we decided to remove AVG completely for now!

When we tried to remove it using "Programs and Features" - it wouldn't work. We had to use the AVG Removal Tool. As said before it does work fine but at the end of the process it does not give you any prompt about "Do you want to restart your PC now or later". It simply say: Restarting computer ... and just restarts it straight away <-madness!
 
This has been a nightmare for me this week. My predecessor loved AVG so all of our clients are using it. Once their renewals are due I'm moving to another product.
 
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I use Microsoft Security Essentials on the 2008R2 Servers, along with hardware and software firewalls managed years with no issue.
 
... but Microsoft Security Essentials is designed to work only on clients PCs such as Windows 7, etc...

It is not supported on any Microsoft server Operating System - to be honest I thought you cannot even install it on server (never tried tho) as it would give errors during installation.

edit: that server crashes we were getting are definitely connected with AVG. Once we have removed the product all servers seem to be operational. It's only been 3 days like that but before it would die after 24 hrs! Also, AVG is adamant their latest version (Business Edition AVG) will not cause any issues as it's been updated - but I could swear we updated on one server last week and it still got affected. Will try again, on a test server and will see before we roll onto rest of servers.
 
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guildmage said:
... but Microsoft Security Essentials is designed to work only on clients PCs such as Windows 7, etc...

It is not supported on any Microsoft server Operating System - to be honest I thought you cannot even install it on server (never tried tho) as it would give errors during installation.

edit: that server crashes we were getting are definitely connected with AVG. Once we have removed the product all servers seem to be operational. It's only been 3 days like that but before it would die after 24 hrs! Also, AVG is adamant their latest version (Business Edition AVG) will not cause any issues as it's been updated - but I could swear we updated on one server last week and it still got affected. Will try again, on a test server and will see before we roll onto rest of servers.
Click to expand...

It was definitely AVG, they coughed to it at the end of last week.

http://s2.postimg.org/up2k9ecd5/image.jpg
 
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