Openmanage and Broadcom teaming issues?

Question

Hi guys, I have a couple of T300 servers (Windows 2008 Server x86 - SP2), which are preforming pretty mundane tasks (AD, DFS, WSUS, Print Server). Both servers have the Broadcom Advanced Control Suite driver (14.4.2.2) installed on them, and, until recently, had a team (load balancing&failover) created using the two physical NICs. They had been operating without a glitch thourhgout the last two years until I decided to install Dell Openmanage application (6.5.0). As soon as OpenManage is installed, both servers lost all contact with the network; I couldn't even ping them. I had to go onto the physical console and dissolve the team. Once you 'mingle' with the team settings, both the team and the independent NIC come back to life and start working again. That is until you reboot the server. Once rebooted the team will work for a few minutes (though very slowly) and ultimately will go quiet. The only way to have the server come back to life is, once again, mingleing with the team through the console. At first, I thought this was an MS patch issue, but I have been able to replicate the problem on two indentically configured, independent servers. I took a long look at the openmanage documentation, but there are no compatibility warnings between the openmanage & the BACS drivers. I am out of ideas, but to open a ticket with Dell. anybody here has experienced a similar issue? Thanks

XS4Me · Accepted Answer

> Your NIC firmwares

Yep, that eventually did the trick, though there were some caveats: somehow when applied, the firmware update only updated one NIC. The other one (the one on the team) remained with the older version. Obviously the team went down as soon as the server got restarted. As soon as I re-run the update, both NICs got the latest firmware. You can check the firmware version of each NIC on the Broadcom utility.

Thanks for advise.

DELL-Rey G · Answer

I would be exteremely interested to know how this turns out. I would also like to get details on how your system is configured to reproduce this here at our location.

XS4Me · Answer

BTW, I just opened will Dell LA the following case: 845581388

XS4Me · Answer

ReyBeast2.

I take it that you are with Dell. If so, I can contact client support (Dell LA) and ask to open a case.I can forward you the case number and any extra information that you require to reproduce. In the mean time, I can give you the service tags of both servers: < ADMIN NOTE : Service tag removed per privacy policy >

XS4Me · Answer

Seems the forum admin does not allow service tags to be published. Ok, this a description of the relevant parts of our two systems:

Poweredge T300, 2 GB RAM, running Windows Server 2008 SP 2 (x86), two Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit NICs (ASIC BCM5122 A0, Firmware: 5722-v3.08, driver: 14.4.2.2), Team driver version 4.4.10, Dell Openmanage 6.5.0.

Both teamed and non-teamed NICs go silent on boot. Only way to get server back on line is to deactivate and reactivate NIC on the server console.

DELL-Jeff M · Answer

Your NIC firmwares and drivers look very out of date, update those and that should fix it. Driver: support.dell.com/.../download.aspx Firmware: support.dell.com/.../download.aspx

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