Windows Server Disk Timeouts during Periods of Network Contention
Disk timeouts during periods of network contention? That doesn't sound right... Unless, you're using iSCSI over a production network for disk connections!
A co-worker of mine was experiencing just this problem earlier this week with some virtualized Windows Servers. He saw this error message in the Windows Event Log...
Event Type: Error
Event Source: symmpi
Event Category: None
Event ID: 15
Date: 7/9/2007
Time: 11:13:08 AM
User: N/A
Computer: COMPUTER1
Description: The device, \Device\Scsi\symmpi1, is not ready for access yet.
Apparently, one potential fix for this problem is to increase the timeout value in the Windows VM for the disk subsystem. According to VMware knowledgebase article "Windows Virtual Machine Blue Screens when I use SAN LUN's":
This problem occurs when the responses from the storage array take longer than the guest operating system expects to wait. The default disk timeout period in Windows is too short to handle the longer delays that can occur in a SAN environment, and a blue screen error is the result of exceeding this timeout.Increase the disk timeout to 60 in the Windows virtual machines by editing the Windows registry as described below:
In the registry, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Services/Disk.
Click Edit/Add value.
Set the value name to TimeOutValue.
Set the data type to REG_DWORD.
Set the data to 0x03c hex (or 60 decimal).
Reboot the virtual machine.
Read the full KB article here.
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