Server machine crash with SOS 3.x Servers

[lbauer]

This issue affects SOS 3.x, and was fixed in SOS 4.x.

If the SOS Server machine has dual network cards or specific types of network cards, the server machine may crash or reboot or lose its network connection. The reason is as follows:

It is not possible to configure the SourceOffSite Version 3.x server to bind to one IP address on a multi-homed machine, neither is it possible for SOS to bind to one network card.

When multiple network cards exist in the SOS Server machine, there is no way to determine which of the network cards the Java Virtual Machine, which the SOS Server uses, will bind to. Therefore, sometimes SOS might function properly and sometimes not. This is a limitation of Java VM.

Sometimes even after a card is removed, there is registry information which causes SOS to think a card still exists. You would therefore have to install the SOS Server on a machine with one static IP address (or network card). This problem does not affect SourceOffSite clients, but the server machine only.

Some customers have also experienced the blue screening even though the Server machine did not have multiple network cards or IP addresses. We tracked the problem down to the network card. When the network card was replaced, the crash went away. The cards that we know of which cause this problem are Linksys Card LNE100TX, Netgear FA310/311/312 and Netgear 302T.

The workarounds are: disable or remove a network card, change network cards, or install SOS on a machine with a single network card. The SOS Server does not need to be on the same machine as the VSS database.

Or, you can upgrade to SOS 4.0. This issue does not affect SOS 4.0, which is written in C# rather than Java.