This paper examines bulk arrival and batch service queueing system with functioning server failure and multiple vacations. Customers are arriving into the system in bulk according to Poisson process with rate λ. Arriving customers are served in batches with minimum of 'a' and maximum of 'b' number of customers according to general bulk service rule. In the service completion epoch if the queue length is less than 'a' then the server leaves for vacation (secondary job) of random length. After a vacation completion, if the queue length is still less than 'a' then the server leaves for another vacation. The server keeps on going vacation until the queue length reaches the value 'a'. The server is not stable at all the times. Sometimes it may fails during functioning of customers. Though the server fails service process will not be interrupted.It will be continued for the current batch of customers with lower service rate than the regular service rate. The server will be repaired after the service completion with lower service rate. The probability generating function of the queue size at an arbitrary time epoch will be obtained for the modelled queueing system by using supplementary variable technique. Moreover various performance characteristics will also be derived with suitable numerical illustrations. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.