Problems with a crashing server

[W_i_l_l]

Hi,

Not sure if this is the right section to ask but,

I am volunteering at a charity and their HP Proliant server in the office is "Crashing" and with a Kernel-Power error, Event ID 41:

"The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly."

I first thought it was the UPS failing but I ran a self test and it passed. I also removed power to the UPS and it successfully shut the server down.

I checked for BSOD's and looked through the event viewer but the logs just stop and then start again with the critical Kernel-Power error.

I then contacted HP (we have a care pack for the server) and ran some diagnostic tests, but as it wasn't a clear cut hardware issue they refused to do anything.

The server is crashing about 2/3 times a month and has been doing so for the last 6 months. I am really struggling to figure out what is going on here. Any help with the issue would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,
Will

 

[W_i_l_l]

Thanks for the quick reply, I will run a memory test tonight.

The server runs Exchange 2010, file shares and AD.

If I don't find any memory issues I will schedule a weekly reboot and see if that fixes it.

 

[W_i_l_l]

Sorry rotor, I was not very specific in what HP asked me to do.

They did make me do a full bios, firmware and software update about 1 month ago. The issue reoccurred 3 times since.

 

[W_i_l_l]

The server has 8GB of Ram with an 8GB pagefile.

Currently at 96% Ram usage.
Exchange store ~ 2GB
2 SQL databases (Windows SBS + Windows Internal Database) ~ 1GB each
The rest is mainly IIS for remote access and OWA.

 

[W_i_l_l]

Thanks for the help.

Ok ASE I will set that up, Would you recommend I set a limit for SQL then?

It seems that HP Integrated Log viewer is not installed... I will have a look on HP's website. Annoying thing is that I arrived when this system was already set up.

Ran the memtest last night and it passed.

 

[W_i_l_l]

does the mem test loop for x amout of times?
i would be included still to have it run over the weekend continually

It looped 4 times. I will try and run it next weekend.

Which HP server is it? Not all the HP servers support the HP Integrated Log Viewer (ML150's etc.)

Grab the memory dump file from C:\windows\minidump and open it with the Windows Debugging Tools. This will give you a more detailed reason as to why it BSOD http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/windows/hardware/ff551063(v=vs.85).aspx and run !analyze -v

SBS 2011's with 8GB ram are awful, it runs much better with 12-16GB.

It is a HP Proliant ML110 g6.

It is not a BSOD, the minidump folder is empty and it is set to create minidumps if it does BSOD.

If it's a newish Gen8 server with ILO4, make sure your ILO version is running at least 1.51 - we've had issues with servers randomly rebooting themselves thinking that the OS was hung.

Its a Gen6 server and as far as I am aware it doesn't have ILO installed.

Thanks for helping out with this.