Michael Ferrante's questions

Wanted to post this here in case anyone else has this issue. We have a Dell PowerEdge R710 running VMWare ESXi 4.1, we got an SNMP trap message via Nagios monitoring:

SERVICE CHECK: theServerName;SnmpTrap;2;chassis marginal Type: chassis Status: marginal Name: 'VMware Rollup Health State' value: 0 233:2:10:09.44

We found a post on VMware Communities about it:

VMware Communities post about SNMP message: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/345217

vmwESXEnvHardwareEvent
[1] vmwSubsystemType.2 (Integer): chassis
[2] vmwHardwareStatus.2 (Integer): marginal
[3] vmwEventDescription.2 (DisplayString): Type: chassis Status: marginal Name: 'VMwareRollup Health State' value: 0 
[4] vmwEnvHardwareTime.2 (Time Ticks): 350 days 09:16:01
[5] snmpTrapEnterprise.0 (Object ID): vmwESX

Then the error did go away after a bit (another SNMP trap received):

SERVICE ALERT: theServerNameSnmpTrap;CRITICAL;SOFT;1;chassis normal Type: chassis Status: normal Name: 'VMware Rollup Health State' value: 0 233:9:46:00.04

What does "chassis marginal" mean in this case?

We've been having an issue with DBCC CHECKDB crashing with an access violation (null pointer deference) on Sql Server 2008R2 when spatial indexes are present. It is repeatable with DBCC CHECKDB WITH EXTENDED_LOGICAL_CHECKS but also happens in some cases with just DBCC CHECKDB.

This is occurring for us on Sql Server 2008 R2 sp1 standard (and developer edition) under Windows 2008 R2 and under Windows 7 (all 64 bit).

Here's a simple T-SQL script that demonstrates the issue. If you run it in the SSMS you'll see the output and the sql connection getting terminated.

use master
go
if exists(select * from sys.databases where name = 'DbccCrashExample') drop database DbccCrashExample
go
create database DbccCrashExample
GO
use DbccCrashExample
go
CREATE TABLE dbo.GeometryTable
(
    GeometryTableID int NOT NULL,
    Feature geometry NOT NULL,
    CONSTRAINT PK_GeometryTable PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (GeometryTableID)
)
GO
insert into dbo.GeometryTable(GeometryTableID, Feature)
select 1, geometry::STGeomFromText('POINT(0 0)', 4326)
go
create spatial index SPATIAL_GeometryTable_Feature on dbo.GeometryTable(Feature) with (BOUNDING_BOX=(0, -2, 1, 2))

-- works
--DBCC CHECKDB

-- fails
DBCC CHECKDB WITH EXTENDED_LOGICAL_CHECKS

One strange thing is that it appears that DBCC has completed without errors, but then a severe error occurs:

CHECKDB found 0 allocation errors and 0 consistency errors in database 'DbccCrashExample'.
Msg 0, Level 11, State 0, Line 0
A severe error occurred on the current command.  The results, if any, should be discarded.
Msg 0, Level 20, State 0, Line 0
A severe error occurred on the current command.  The results, if any, should be discarded.

In the Sql Server error log we get a stack dump like this:

SqlDumpExceptionHandler: Process 59 generated fatal exception c0000005 EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION. SQL Server is terminating this process.                                                                                        
* *******************************************************************************                                
*                                                                                                                
* BEGIN STACK DUMP:                                                                                              
*   11/20/11 13:23:34 spid 59                                                                                    
*                                                                                                                
*                                                                                                                
*   Exception Address = 0000000000E84A8D Module(sqlservr+0000000000274A8D)                                       
*   Exception Code    = c0000005 EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION                                                      
*   Access Violation occurred reading address 0000000000000000                                                   
* Input Buffer 408 bytes -                                                                                       
*             create spatial index SPATIAL_GeometryTable_Feature on dbo.Geo                                      
*  metryTable(Feature) with (BOUNDING_BOX=(0, -2, 1, 2))   -- works --DBCC                                       
*  CHECKDB  -- fails DBCC CHECKDB WITH EXTENDED_LOGICAL_CHECKS                                                   
*                                                                                          

We have opened a paid support case with Microsoft about the issue. I am posting this problem here to share the issue with others. I will post what we hear back from Microsoft on the issue.

What process is necessary to configure a Windows environment to allow me to use DNS CNAME to reference servers?

I want to do this so that I can name my servers something like SRV001, but still have \\file point to that server, so when SRV002 replaces it I don't have to update any of the links people have, just update the DNS CNAME and everyone will get pointed to the new server.