NIC problem on reboot

[joedig]

Hi,
I seem to have a problem on a W2K03 SP1 server. Each time the server reboots the event log displays the following message:

HP Network Team #1: PROBLEM: A Failover occurred: The Primary Network Link is not receiving. Receive-path validation has been enabled for this Team by selecting the Enable receive-path validation Heartbeat Setting. ACTION: Please check your cabling to the link partner. Check the switch port status, including verifying that the switch port is not configured as a Switch-assist Channel. Generate Broadcast traffic on the network to test whether these are being received. Also make sure all teamed NICs are on the same broadcast domain. Run diagnostics to test card. Drop the NIC from the team, determine whether it is receiving broadcast traffic in an unteamed configuration.

I have downloaded and installed the latest drivers for the NIC but still have the problem. Any ideas?

Joseph

 

[NickFerrar]

I presume you are using 2 teamed NICs? If not then break the team in the driver config. If you are using teaming have you verified connectivity on each individual NIC? It looks just like one of the NICs doesn't have a network connection.

 

[joedig]

The one NIC has a static IP and the second has an IP supplied through DNS, both are working. If I remove the team and use the cards separately they are both fine. It's only when I team them that the event viewer has a problem with any of the NIC's. I have noticed though that 16 seconds after the above error is reported the following message is logged:

HP Network Team #1: A previously failed Network Link's receive status has been restored.

So it would seem that the failover is a temporary incident.

Any thoughts?

Cheers,
Joseph

 

[NortonES2]

Are they both plugged into the same switch/ As we have the same issue and it's caused by the switches running Spanning Tree which takes upto 30 seconds to recognise the server when it's rebooted.

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If it doesn't leak oil it must be empty!!

 

[joedig]

Afraid so both NIC are plugged into the same switch, I have even moved them around the switch incase there was a problem with the socket, but still the same problem. No other server is suffering with the problem. Most odd!

Joseph

 

[compuveg]

My guess would be that during the system shutdown, the server's shutting down one NIC, then the other. The event log message is a result of the delay between the 2 and the fact that such NIC Team errors are still being logged during the process.

If this is happenning during startup, it would still be about the same answer, just reversed. One NIC's being brought online before the other.

In either case, I would have thought the teaming software would have been aware enough to see the system was shutting down or starting up and ignored that.

Since this obviously isn't the case, I would look into the team settings. The NIC Team on the server I checked here is defaulting to checking transmit and recieve paths every 3 seconds. My guess is that yours is doing this every 15-16 seconds, based on the timing between 'link down' and 'link up' events. Making this hearbeat time longer, say every 60 seconds, would make the team much less useful, but would supress error messages. I prefer the shorter heartbeats for fault tolerance reasons. If you're just doing it for more bandwidth then it probably isn't an issue to make it longer.

I would probably verify this with the equipment manufacturer, depending on how regulated the environment is.