Guest trhacker Posted November 28, 2007 Posted November 28, 2007 One of our customers is setting up 3 new Windows 2003 Servers. The installation was fine, but after enabling teaming on the onboard nics, all 3 servers stopped responding at boot-time. Now they only boot in Safe mode (without networking), and Last Know Good Configuration does not fix the problem. Two of the servers are Dell PowerEdge 2950, the third is Dell too but I don’t know the model. NICs are Broadcom and are embedded in the motherboard. 1) What drivers/services do I have to disable to prevent teaming to load and succesfully boot in normal mode? 2) Is there some known issue with teaming and/or Broadcom nics, Windows server, some bugfix I’m not aware, etc.? Maybe I have not given sufficient informations, but that’s all I got for the moment (tomorrow I ‘ll be able to contact my customer in order to have further details), in the meantime I’ll be glad if someone could give some hints nonetheless. Thanks for your attention
Guest Iain Posted November 29, 2007 Posted November 29, 2007 RE: Servers not booting after enabling teaming How many NIC's have each server got ...? it seems to read that you have teamed the 3 servers together .. ? Sorry if am reading it wrong. Teamin of multiple NIC's installed in the same server would give a single physical address to the NIC's installed allowing for transmit / receive load balancing depending on how you configured the teaming at installation. Only 1 physical address would exsist. -- Iain Marshall MCSE MCSA MCPs MCP "trhacker" wrote: > One of our customers is setting up 3 new Windows 2003 Servers. > The installation was fine, but after enabling teaming on the onboard nics, > all 3 servers stopped responding at boot-time. Now they only boot in Safe > mode > (without networking), and Last Know Good Configuration does not fix the > problem. > Two of the servers are Dell PowerEdge 2950, the third is Dell too but I > don’t know the model. NICs are Broadcom and are embedded in the motherboard. > > 1) What drivers/services do I have to disable to prevent teaming to load and > succesfully boot in normal mode? > 2) Is there some known issue with teaming and/or Broadcom nics, Windows > server, some bugfix I’m not aware, etc.? > > Maybe I have not given sufficient informations, but that’s all I got for the > moment (tomorrow I ‘ll be able to contact my customer in order to have > further details), in the meantime I’ll be glad if someone could give some > hints nonetheless. > > Thanks for your attention >
Guest trhacker Posted November 29, 2007 Posted November 29, 2007 RE: Servers not booting after enabling teaming "Iain" wrote: > How many NIC's have each server got ...? it seems to read that you have > teamed the 3 servers together .. ? Sorry if am reading it wrong. No, I did'nt teamed the servers together: for each server, two nics are teamed together in order act as a single interface. But the the servers are not linked each other (no load balancing between them). The same behaviour occurred for each server: they stopped responding after boot. Hope to have been clearer
Guest Iain Posted November 30, 2007 Posted November 30, 2007 RE: Servers not booting after enabling teaming Ok ... I have had problems with teaming before .. never seems to be common problem ... but. I think you have a problem with the broadcom drivers and the card types. By any chance is one on board and another an add on card? This seems to fail alot. Did both cards work independantly before teaming and what ip address have been registered in active directory , dns etc... Are their any event ids in the error logs once in safe mode? Am sorry to say this could be a long winded process... in the past I have had to restore the machines with the ASR disk to the unbonded state. Sorry I cant be of any more help at the moment. -- Iain Marshall MCSE MCSA MCPs MCP "trhacker" wrote: > > > "Iain" wrote: > > > How many NIC's have each server got ...? it seems to read that you have > > teamed the 3 servers together .. ? Sorry if am reading it wrong. > > No, I did'nt teamed the servers together: for each server, two nics are > teamed together in order act as a single interface. But the the servers are > not linked each other (no load balancing between them). > The same behaviour occurred for each server: they stopped responding after > boot. > > Hope to have been clearer > > >
Guest trhacker Posted December 1, 2007 Posted December 1, 2007 RE: Servers not booting after enabling teaming Hi Iain, first of all, thank you for your help. Yesterday I’ve been at the customer's, so I have finally seen the servers and begun troubleshooting. 1) The servers stopped responding not at boot, but while loading windows: they hang at Windows logo. 2) I tried restarting in bootlog mode, but the system was unable to create the ntbtlog.txt file (probably it fails too early), and consequently no error was logged in the Event Viewer. 3) In safe mode, I disabled all the virtual BACS interface (BACS is the Broadcom program to manage nics) from the Hardware Manager and got the system to succesfully boot. However I still needed to enable a working teming, so I updated both the drivers and the management program to the latest release from the Dell site. Then I installed Microsoft HotFix 912222 (Scalable Networking Pack release). Finally, I’ve recreated the teaming using BACS software. Now the server successfully starts about 80% of the times, but sometimes it continues hanging at the windows logo. Some additional informations: - both nics are Nextreme II Gigabit Eth embedded onto the motherboard - nics were in DHCP during the test (it wasn’t possible to assign static address due to customer’s policy reasons and infrastructure); that way it was possible to create a working team with a dynamic DHCP address assigned to it; when the OS succedds to start, the teaming is working and functional. All these oprations, have been performed on the Dell 1950 server. Now we have decided to format and reinstall the server, and, at the same time, try the above procedure for the other 2 servers (Dell 2950). In order to do this, I’ve scheduled a new technical intervention on netxt wednesday. In the meantime, I still accept every suggestion! Regards -- Gabriele "Iain" wrote: > Ok ... I have had problems with teaming before .. never seems to be common > problem ... but. > > I think you have a problem with the broadcom drivers and the card types. > By any chance is one on board and another an add on card? This seems to > fail alot. > > Did both cards work independantly before teaming and what ip address have > been registered in active directory , dns etc... > > Are their any event ids in the error logs once in safe mode? > > Am sorry to say this could be a long winded process... in the past I have > had to restore the machines with the ASR disk to the unbonded state. Sorry I > cant be of any more help at the moment. > -- > Iain Marshall > MCSE MCSA MCPs MCP > > > "trhacker" wrote: > > > > > > > "Iain" wrote: > > > > > How many NIC's have each server got ...? it seems to read that you have > > > teamed the 3 servers together .. ? Sorry if am reading it wrong. > > > > No, I did'nt teamed the servers together: for each server, two nics are > > teamed together in order act as a single interface. But the the servers are > > not linked each other (no load balancing between them). > > The same behaviour occurred for each server: they stopped responding after > > boot. > > > > Hope to have been clearer > > > > > >
Guest trhacker Posted December 6, 2007 Posted December 6, 2007 Solved Solved A final update to this post, now the issue seems to be resolved. I followed this procedure: - restored the server disabling the virtual teaming driver and the Packer scheduling driver (seemed not able to load at boot time). - restored/repaired the old broadcom drivers through the installer - updated Broadcom drivers and applications to the latest release - disabled Packet Scheduler on both the phisycal nterfaces - created a new team with only one adapter bounded to it - after several reboots, added the second interfaces to the team. Now all 3 servers are functioning properly, made several reboots, plus tested Teaming for network loss and everything is working fine. In the end, I think it all relied on Packet Scheduler (maybe I shouldn't have disabled the packet scheduler driver when restoring the server, but only the teaming driver), however...all well what ends well :)
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