I will try to provide as much information about the problem as possible:
A customer of ours has a Supermicro X9DR3-F based Server running 2008 R2 with Hyper-v. There are 3 virtual machines 1 PDC, 1 Exchange 2010, and 1 Antivrus management server. The office has about 20 users so I would not classify it as a "high load system"
The raid controller has 2x 1TB HDDs that are enterprise class SATA (Seagate) (RAID1) boot array
And 2x 300GB 10k RPM WD raptor drives also enterprise versions. (RAID1)
On initial installation with the 3.5 RSTe version the system would blue screen and crash about 1 time a week. the raid 1 arrays would be broken and boot raid array would have both disks listed as failure occurred. I could then reset one of the disks to normal in the ROM screen and reboot. Then after some fussing I could get into the RSTe and restore the second disk and verify the array. This would eventually complete and then the system would work again for about another week.
I attempted to upgrade to 3.6 and that did make the problem improve. now the system only reboots when the 2 disks in the boot array both have a "failed" status. however instead of the blue screen now the RSTe reports constantly that the disks are removed and added under heavy load (notification bubble appears)
I recently realized that supermicro has a Romley driver (The C600 Raid driver for RSTe SATA controller) that is version 3.7 I have recently installed this but it has not resolved all of the issues.
One persistent issue that seems to occur in all version is the following events when you try to run the IAStorUI.exe in the event viewer. This only occurs when the IAStorUI.exe produces the error "An unknown error has occurred while running this application. If the problem persists, please try restarting your computer or try reinstalling the application" (needless to say I have tried both many times) About one out of every 6 times I run the IAStorUI.exe it will open properly, but if left open for more than a minute or two it will freeze or crash.
Source: PSI
Warning: Initial Storage Drive Data Load failed. The driver may be busy.
followed by
Source: IRST_UI
Failed to load Storage Data from Driver.
I have replaced many of the components in the computer, Hard Disks (2 Times), memory, motherboard, power supply, SATA backplane board. Currently the server is running without the backplane board. and in all cases there has been no improvement in the situation.
(The previous motherboard was moved to another system running another hyper-v server. That one however had an LSI raid card placed in it for all of the disks except the CDrom an RDX drive. That system has worked properly ever since, which leads me to believe it is something specific to the chipset / RSTe software and some potential conflict or error.)
Information from my msinfo32 is included below (thought it might be helpful)
System Information report written at: 08/31/13 11:28:43
System Name: XXXXXXXX
[System Summary]
Item Value
OS Name Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise
Version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name XXXXXXXX
System Manufacturer Supermicro
System Model X9DR3-F
System Type x64-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 0 @ 2.00GHz, 2001 Mhz, 6 Core(s), 12 Logical Processor(s)
Processor Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 0 @ 2.00GHz, 2001 Mhz, 6 Core(s), 12 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 1.1, 10/3/2012
SMBIOS Version 2.7
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume2
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7601.17514"
User Name Not Available
Time Zone Eastern Daylight Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 32.0 GB
Total Physical Memory 32.0 GB
Available Physical Memory 2.22 GB
Total Virtual Memory 63.9 GB
Available Virtual Memory 33.3 GB
Page File Space 32.0 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
[Disks]
Item Value
Description Disk drive
Manufacturer (Standard disk drives)
Model FreeBSD iSCSI Disk SCSI Disk Device
Bytes/Sector 512
Media Loaded Yes
Media Type Fixed hard disk
Partitions 1
SCSI Bus 0
SCSI Logical Unit 0
SCSI Port 1
SCSI Target ID 0
Sectors/Track 63
Size 950.00 GB (1,020,049,873,920 bytes)
Total Cylinders 124,014
Total Sectors 1,992,284,910
Total Tracks 31,623,570
Tracks/Cylinder 255
Partition Disk #3, Partition #0
Partition Size 950.00 GB (1,020,051,587,072 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset 1,048,576 bytes
Description Disk drive
Manufacturer (Standard disk drives)
Model Intel Raid 1 Volume SCSI Disk Device
Bytes/Sector 512
Media Loaded Yes
Media Type Fixed hard disk
Partitions 4
SCSI Bus 6
SCSI Logical Unit 0
SCSI Port 0
SCSI Target ID 1
Sectors/Track 63
Size 1.73 TB (1,900,409,817,600 bytes)
Total Cylinders 231,045
Total Sectors 3,711,737,925
Total Tracks 58,916,475
Tracks/Cylinder 255
Partition Disk #1, Partition #0
Partition Size 100.00 MB (104,857,600 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset 1,048,576 bytes
Partition Disk #1, Partition #1
Partition Size 88.61 GB (95,143,591,936 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset 105,906,176 bytes
Partition Disk #1, Partition #2
Partition Size 87.89 GB (94,371,840,000 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset 95,249,498,112 bytes
Partition Disk #1, Partition #3
Partition Size 1.56 TB (1,710,789,492,736 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset 189,621,338,112 bytes
Description Disk drive
Manufacturer (Standard disk drives)
Model Intel Raid 1 Volume SCSI Disk Device
Bytes/Sector 512
Media Loaded Yes
Media Type Fixed hard disk
Partitions 1
SCSI Bus 6
SCSI Logical Unit 0
SCSI Port 0
SCSI Target ID 2
Sectors/Track 63
Size 221.19 GB (237,504,960,000 bytes)
Total Cylinders 28,875
Total Sectors 463,876,875
Total Tracks 7,363,125
Tracks/Cylinder 255
Partition Disk #2, Partition #0
Partition Size 221.20 GB (237,507,706,880 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset 1,048,576 bytes
Description Disk drive
Manufacturer (Standard disk drives)
Model TANDBERG RDX SCSI Disk Device
Bytes/Sector Not Available
Media Loaded Yes
Media Type Not Available
Partitions 0
SCSI Bus 5
SCSI Logical Unit 0
SCSI Port 0
SCSI Target ID 0
Sectors/Track Not Available
Size Not Available
Total Cylinders Not Available
Total Sectors Not Available
Total Tracks Not Available
Tracks/Cylinder Not Available
[SCSI]
Item Value
Name Microsoft iSCSI Initiator
Manufacturer Microsoft
Status OK
PNP Device ID ROOT\ISCSIPRT\0000
Driver c:\windows\system32\drivers\msiscsi.sys (6.1.7601.17514, 267.38 KB (273,792 bytes), 11/20/2010 10:24 PM)
Name Microsoft VHD HBA
Manufacturer Microsoft
Status OK
PNP Device ID {8E7BD593-6E6C-4C52-86A6-77175494DD8E}\MSVHDHBA\1&3030E83&0&01
Driver c:\windows\system32\drivers\vhdmp.sys (6.1.7601.21809, 209.86 KB (214,896 bytes), 4/12/2013 1:02 AM)
Name Intel(R) C600+/C220+ series chipset SATA RAID Controller
Manufacturer Intel Corporation
Status OK
PNP Device ID PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2826&SUBSYS_062815D9&REV_06\3&11583659&0&FA
I/O Port 0x00009070-0x00009077
I/O Port 0x00009060-0x00009063
I/O Port 0x00009050-0x00009057
I/O Port 0x00009040-0x00009043
I/O Port 0x00009020-0x0000903F
Memory Address 0xDFB21000-0xDFB217FF
IRQ Channel IRQ 4294967285
Driver c:\windows\system32\drivers\iastora.sys (3.7.0.1092, 568.39 KB (582,032 bytes), 8/30/2013 6:27 PM)