Well so far I must say my first experience with Dell servers hasn't been that exciting. We recently picked up the following computer to run as a Windows 2008 R2 remote desktop server:
Dell T710
2 x Xeon X5550's
48gb 1066mhz DDR3 (12x4gb)
8x146gig 15,000 rpm Seagate Cheetah SAS drives (2 in a RAID 1 the OS&apps are installed on and 5 in a RAID 6 array for our user data and one global hotspare)
It's a freaking awesome machine, but every so often (maybe once a week on average) the entire thing crashes, but does not reboot. There is no video @ the console, the computer appears to not be running (hitting numlock won't change the numlock light on or off), but all the fans and system lights are still on. I can't access the iDrac remotely either. To get the system back I have to hold in the power button until the system completely powers down, then I can hit the power button again and it starts up as if nothing happened (except for Windows telling me that it had an unexpected shut down).
Dell has already sent a new motherboard which has been installed. We had the same crash about 3 days after replacing the motherboard, so I guess that wasn't the problem. I've ran all of Dell's diagnostic tools but they all come up blank on it being a hardware problem. Windows Logs don't seem to show anything useful either. I'm stuck! Any ideas?
Dell doesn't think it's a hardware problem but I've never seen a software problem that will crash all hardware including the video, but not cause it to reboot.
Dell T710
2 x Xeon X5550's
48gb 1066mhz DDR3 (12x4gb)
8x146gig 15,000 rpm Seagate Cheetah SAS drives (2 in a RAID 1 the OS&apps are installed on and 5 in a RAID 6 array for our user data and one global hotspare)
It's a freaking awesome machine, but every so often (maybe once a week on average) the entire thing crashes, but does not reboot. There is no video @ the console, the computer appears to not be running (hitting numlock won't change the numlock light on or off), but all the fans and system lights are still on. I can't access the iDrac remotely either. To get the system back I have to hold in the power button until the system completely powers down, then I can hit the power button again and it starts up as if nothing happened (except for Windows telling me that it had an unexpected shut down).
Dell has already sent a new motherboard which has been installed. We had the same crash about 3 days after replacing the motherboard, so I guess that wasn't the problem. I've ran all of Dell's diagnostic tools but they all come up blank on it being a hardware problem. Windows Logs don't seem to show anything useful either. I'm stuck! Any ideas?
Dell doesn't think it's a hardware problem but I've never seen a software problem that will crash all hardware including the video, but not cause it to reboot.
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