VMware server switching itself off

[m4rky]

My VMWare ESXi 5.1 server runs on a HP Proliant NL40 microserver. It is used to run two linux and a Windows Server Essentials 2012 VM.

Every now and again the HP Server switches itself off.

Are there any logs I can look at to give me a hint as too why this is happening?

It happens randomly and the server always has clean power as its on a UPS.

[meyner22]

Have you configured the DRAC settings on your proliant?  The DRAC has a lot of functionality such as video capture, post codes and diagnostics.  You can configure Alerts for system health, etc...

Is your HP rebooting itself or actually powering off?

[m4rky]

Thanks for the reply.

My server does not have a DRAC card. It's only the cheap microserver.

It switches itself off.

[Virtualinfra]

Can you check vmkernel and vmkevent logs in esxi. grep to the time before the reboot.

you can see the log that are before reboot here in this location

#cd /scratch/log

log# ls -lstr

# see the date and time unzip the logs and see if that is related to operation with in ESXI,

Also run HP proliant online diagnostic tool to see if there is a hardware issue, if you have hardware covered under warranty you can log a case with HP to run diagnostics tool on the hardware to see if there issue.

I had similar issue some time before, and it was mother board problem.

[m4rky]

Virtualinfra:  Thanks for the tips. I have looked through the logs and have found the following message that appeared just before the last shutdown: "VMKAcpi: 217: In PowerButton Helper"

So I used grep to find the same message in all the log files and it again appears roughly the same time a shut down occurred.

So this suggests that someone is pressing the power off button!

I have a hunch that it is my 7 year old son thinking he is switching the printer on/off as it's sat next to the server.

I will monitor this and also run the HP diagnostics just in case there is a problem.

Think I will also move the server further away from the printer!!!