SBS – Alert – ‘The following disk has low idle time’

KB ID 0000583 

Problem

I got this alert forwarded to me, from a client that I’d put in new hard drives for a few week ago.

Alert:

The following disk has low idle time, which may cause slow response time when reading or writing files to the disk. Disk: {Number} {Drive Letter}: Review the Disk Transfers/sec and % Idle Time counters for the PhysicalDisk performance object. If the Disk Transfers/sec counter is consistently below 150 while the % Idle Time counter remains very low (close to 0), there may be a problem with the disk driver or hardware. If the review shows that the disk is functioning properly, use Task Manager to determine which processes are causing the majority of the disk activity. You can attempt to correct the problem by stopping and then restarting those processes. You can disable this alert or change its threshold by using the Change Alert Notifications task in the Server Management Monitoring and Reporting tasked.

Solution

1. It’s telling me review some counters (Start > Run >Perfmon {Enter}). I added in the counters that it asked me to, and sure enough this disk was getting thrashed with a very high disk latency.

2. While discussing it in the office, a colleague suggested I check the BBWC on the RAID card. Sure enough a quick look at the System Management Homepage shows;

4. The battery has failed on the internal E200i RAID card. The server in question was an HP ML350 (G5). So my first thought was to update the firmware for the RAID card, (If for no other reason than it’s the first thing HP would ask me to do, if I logged a call). This did not resolve the problem, so I logged the call for a replacement (The server is under care pack).

5. After fitting, I left it 24 hours for the battery to charge, and checked it again.

Note: Latency has dropped from 1100 to 70).

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

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