We just encountered the same problem yesterday during reindexing on a SQL 2005 SP2 EE 64bit cluster running on Windows Server 2003 EE SP2. We have three reindexing jobs running at the same time on three drives. One of the three jobs failed with the error below.

Message

Executed as user: BLAIRNET\sqlsaservice. TCP Provider: The semaphore timeout period has expired. [SQLSTATE 08S01] (Error 121) Communication link failure [SQLSTATE 08S01] (Error 121). The step failed.

We replaced the motherboard on this server a few days ago to address a memory issue. The following KB article indicates this can be a firmware/motheboard issue, but the firmware is not that old and the KB references 32bit. We are 64bit.

Dave