DSS 6 hangs every few days

[Laxity]

Hi,

our DSS6 server is behaving strangely in the past few weeks.

Its been running just fine for about 3 years - now its having problems - it hangs like once a week. No Ping, nothing. Only thing we can do is reboot it.

Now this might be a coincidence but to me it seems these problems came with the update to 6.0up80.xxxx.5626 2011-08-18 b5626

Before then we never had these kind of problems.

The server completely freezes, no input using the keyboard (IPMI) is possible.

Just before the freeze there are errors in the "critial_errors.log":

2011/09/21 04:37:34|[48792.871267] scsi cmnd aborted, scsi_cmnd(0xffff88011061ae40), cmnd[0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0], scsi_id = 0x 0, scsi_lun = 0x 1.
2011/09/21 04:37:44|[48802.871272] scsi cmnd aborted, scsi_cmnd(0xffff88011061abc0), cmnd[0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0], scsi_id = 0x 0, scsi_lun = 0x 1.
2011/09/21 04:37:54|[48812.871271] scsi cmnd aborted, scsi_cmnd(0xffff8800a2b38d00), cmnd[0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0], scsi_id = 0x 0, scsi_lun = 0x 1.
2011/09/21 04:38:04|[48822.871269] scsi cmnd aborted, scsi_cmnd(0xffff8800727106c0), cmnd[0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0,0x 0], scsi_id = 0x 0, scsi_lun = 0x 1.

I checked the Memory using the memtest utlility at boot - memory seems to be fine.

RAID controller is an areca ARC-1261 with latest firmware 1.49

any hints? Maybe this is a known problem?

Thanks in advance!
Philipp

[mjp]

Have you checked the actual hard drives for trouble (or anything related, e.g. power, cabling)?

[Laxity]

Have you checked the actual hard drives for trouble (or anything related, e.g. power, cabling)?

Thanks fot the reply.
Yes I did, I ran a complete Check on the RAID controller:

2011-09-21 10:08:22 ARC-1261-VOL#01  : Complete Check
Elapse Time : 004:42:47
Total Errors : 0

2011-09-21 11:28:28 ARC-1261-VOL#00  : Complete Check
Elapse Time : 006:02:54
Total Errors : 0

To me it seems there is nothing wrong with the hardware.
All HDDs are ok when it comes to temperature, the memory seems to be OK and the system has normal temperatures also..
If there would be any HDD problems the Areca Controller would have sent me an email - but the event log is just fine..

[To-P]

Could you please reported it through our user portal and send us the logs?
We will need to analyse them to find what's the root of this issue.

[Al-S]

- Check your RAID Controller firmware, is it updated to the latest version?
You can check for that from your Controller website or contact its support.

[Laxity]

Thanks To-P and Al-S,

I ran another Volume System Check on the Areca Controller and it reported a read-error on one drive 7 times during the check. I replaced the disk with a fresh one and for now all seems to be good.

If this really solves the problem it would be strange the whole systems hangs just because of a faulty drive (the RAID controller should take care of that).

Firmware is 1.49 (which is the latest for the ARC-1261)