Host automatically restarting

[imclaren]

Hi,

I have a customer who has an ESX4i (4.0.0, build 208167) host running one Windows 2003 guest. It's a decent server - Fujitsu Primergy RX300S5 with 6Gb RAM and a couple of Xeons.

Pretty much every Sunday, or every other Sunday, at 11:55am (GMT), the host restarts itself. I've not been there to witness it, but it looks like somone has hit the reset switch - no shutdown logs, no errors. The log has 3 missing minutes, then starts logging its boot-up information.

Can anyone suggest what this might be? I can't see it being a PSOD as it restarts automatically, and I don't believe there is a watchdog enabled in the BIOS (I will need to check with the guy who built it though).

The one thing I'm suspicious of is that SCSI pass-through is in place, to connect the external tape drive to the backup software (Backup Exec) in the VM. I've seen that cause PSOD's before, but not reboots. On top of that, there's nothing scheduled to happen, that I know of, at the time the restart occurs.

Any advice/pointers greatly appreciated! I've attached a PDF showing when the unexpected shutdowns occur.

Thanks,

Iain

[MrMattyBoyMHS]

Hi

I have exactly the same issue with 2 hosts. I found someone else with the issue, however it turned out to be 2 faulty memory modules, but I have checked. But I have checked both of mine several times. I have a link to my discussion here, if you would you like to see my support logs: http://communities.vmware.com/message/1991948#1991948

Good luck with the issue and I'll let you know if I have any progress!

Thanks

Matt

[orthohin]

Hi,

Here is a thread relating this, It may help...

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/173627

Regards,
Milton

[MrMattyBoyMHS]

That's not really solving it though, just a 'solution' for better uptime

[Ande11]

I don't know specifically about Fujitsu servers but I would check and see if there is an ASR setting in the BIOS and turn that off.  That way you might see the PSOD when you come in on Monday morning.

[imclaren]

I'm suspecting the weekly UPS self-test may be to blame, although there's nothing in its logs relating to the time of the issue.

I'll do a manual one tonight, and see what happens....

[imclaren]

Looks like I'm pinning this one on the UPS. Once I'd found the right one, I noticed it was set to self-test at 11:50am every Sunday.

Did a manual self-test....nothing happened.

Did a second self-test....everything went dark. :smileylaugh:

Thanks for all the suggestions!

Iain