I have a new server that prim95 fails after 8 hours. I've run it twice. One time I got the "Fatal error" message from prime95. The other time the server crashed completely, requiring a reboot.

In both cases, the failure occured between 8 and 9 hours of operation. So my question is : Am I asking too much of a server in a datacenter?

Well.... it isn't asking too much of a server.. but I have a question - is it a managed server (as in are you in charge of managing it?)

or is it unmanaged.
(dont' confuse this with the company called 'managed', since they chose a silly name)

It is a managed server.

I guess what I'm wondering is how long one should run prime95 to assess server stability.

I should have mentioned for those who don't know, I'm using prime95 to stress test my server. It stresses mainly CPU and memory by running complex prime number calculations over and over. If prime95 reports an error, then 99.999% of the time it's a hardware problem.

Ah.. see I've never really done any stress tests on my servers.. I guess I should.. but I think real world tests prove better.. sure you can get lucky once and then not the next time..

but after all why use a program to run a server to dust when you can use a few forum members!

Well, I got a new server from my provider. Ran another test run. It died in 23 hours (of a 24 hour test).

Perhaps servers in datacenters just can't handle the kind of stress prime95 puts on a server. Perhaps it's a heat issue. What other good stress test programs are there?

Quick question - where can you get prime95 from? I want to stress test my new Managed.com test server (once they reboot it... it's already been 40+ minutes).

- Matt

Prime95 is availabel here:

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm

It only stresses the CPU and RAM (and the Motherboard). You'll need to do something else to stress your hard drive(s).