2003 "Unable to allocate work item" event 2021

[Mike O.]

We have two Windows 2003 x64 R2 Enterprise servers in a file server cluster.
They're both running on HP DL360G6 servers that are about 3 months old and
are accessing an EMC CX700 array with QLogic fiber cards. The servers are up
to date with the Windows patches and the various HP drivers.

Over the last few months, we've been seeing some of the "2021" event log
warnings from the "SRV" with the message "the server was unable to allocate a
work item 1 times in the last 60 seconds". Occasionally, it's "...2
times...", but I've not seen anything higher than that. They've been fairly
frequent, but we've not noticed any performance issues.

However, the last week or so we've been getting reports that the server is
"slow". We checked the logs, and we're seeing a lot more of those warnings
(pretty much every minute).

Over this last weekend we did a failover to the other node. We're still
seeing the warnings, but it looks like the performance is back up.

I've done some searching on the net, and found some info about adjusting the
registry settings regarding memory, but the information I've found seems to
be for the 32 bit versions of Windows, not x64. Since I know the 64 bit
version handles the memory differently, I'm hesitent to apply settings for
the 32 bit memory managment system.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Edwin vMierlo [MVP]]

In these situations I normally get Microsoft support involved to further
investigate 2021 events
something could be leaking, and you really want to know what that is, prior
to tweaking anything !

rgds,
Edwin.

"Mike O." <Mi...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:6012C453-6372-4F70...@microsoft.com...

[Patrick Mandemaker]

Hi Mike,

Wow 1st time I see this on x64 machines. Probably a leaky driver. Try
troubleshooting with poolmon.exe. Or update drivers like the HBA, Antivirus,
backupagents.

Regards,

Patrick Mandemaker

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