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VMM Troubleshooting: Deploying Virtual Machines and Services in a Private Cloud

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Toolbox3Here’s another great article I found while perusing all the new stuff in our TechNet Wiki. This one was authored by Tim Sherer and goes through some common and maybe not so common issues you may run into when deploying VMM virtual machines and services in a private cloud:

VMM Troubleshooting: Deploying Virtual Machines and Services in a Private Cloud (en-US) : http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/9129.vmm-troubleshooting-deploying-virtual-machines-and-services-in-a-private-cloud-en-us.aspx

UPDATE: It looks like the information at the link above has been moved here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg696970.aspx

Enjoy!

J.C. Hornbeck| System Center & Security Knowledge Engineer

Get the latest System Center news onFacebookandTwitter:

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App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/appv/
ConfigMgr Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
DPM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
MED-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/medv/
Orchestrator Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
SCVMM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm
Server App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/serverappv
Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
System Center Essentials Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenteressentials
WSUS Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/sus/

The Forefront Server Protection blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/fss/
The Forefront Endpoint Security blog : http://blogs.technet.com/b/clientsecurity/
The Forefront Identity Manager blog : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ms-identity-support/
The Forefront TMG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/isablog/
The Forefront UAG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/edgeaccessblog/


Troubleshooting service templates in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager

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imageHi there, this is Alvin Morales and today I want to talk about how to troubleshoot a service template deployment in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM).  In VMM, we have a new feature for deploying virtual machines (VMs) as a service. There are several blog posts already on this and you can read more about it at the links below:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg675105.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg650474.aspx

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/using-services-templates-in-system-center-virtual-machine-manager-2012.aspx

I won't focus this blog on how to create a service template but more on how you can track the changes that happen behind the scenes to troubleshoot any issues.

Let's first create a scenario.  For simplicity sake, we will use a single VM as this will help us understand the process and use it to track any other deployment. The service template will create a VM with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, install the Server App-V agent and then import a Server App-V package to the server.

Once you go through the deployment process and the job starts in the background, this is what occurs:

1) The VHD is transferred from the library to the host via BITS. This process is similar to creating a VM from a template.

2) Once the VM is created on the host, the process will add a virtual floppy to apply all the customization provided in the OS configuration of the template. This will include the addition of roles and features. You can view steps 1 and 2 by connecting to the VM using Hyper-V.

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Once SysPrep is complete, the VM is domain joined and running the process that will install a guest VMM agent. You can confirm that this process occurred by connecting to the VM and navigating to %programdata%\vmmlogs. The guest agent will serve as the listener to the SCVMM service to perform actions on the guest VM.

3) Once the agent is installed it will proceed to run scripts in the VM, but before it runs these scripts it needs to transfer them to the guest VM. This step allows you to restart the job if an error occurs. This is done by transferring the custom resource folder from the library to the VM and these files are stored under c:\windows\temp under a folder called scvmmxxx\xxx.cr folder.

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4) Once the script files are copied, the Server App-V agent install script will launch the script using c:\windows\temp\ as its working directory. Here it will create two files named GCE_stderrorXXX and GCE_stdoutXXX. These are text files that capture the output of the running script. The GCE_stdoutxxx contains the information of the current actions being performed by the process and the GCE_stderrorxxx file will have any error encountered by the script. If the script encounters an error and stops the process, it will leave this last log in the directory for review. If the process completes successfully it deletes all the contents inside windows\temp

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5) Assuming that the process succeeds, we then proceed to transfer the application files specified in the application section of the template. In this case, this is a Server App-V package so it will transfer the package files from the library and store them in the local drive. These files will be stored in c:\windows\MSSCVMMApplications.

Inside this folder you will have two additional folders. One is for Server App-V and it’s here that we store our App-V files. The other is a Webdeploy folder that will store any web apps you have specified in the template.

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Since we are using Server App-V, it will launch all PowerShell command to import the application into the Server App-V cache.

NOTE If we were installing a SQL dacpack, the files will be deployed to c:\windows\ MSSCVMMSQLInstance

If the process was successful, you will see the Server App-V application running a service or an icon on the Server App-V agent application list.

The service template process will store logs in c:\programdata\Microsoft\Virtual Machine Manager to track the process of an application installation.

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Sample entry of a VMMapplicationmanager.log:

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If you are configuring a SQL instance in the service template as part of your deployment, you can gather SQL logs by going to c:\program files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\log and look in Summary.txt for errors or failures.

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Alvin Morales | Senior Support Escalation Engineer

Get the latest System Center news onFacebookandTwitter:

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App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/appv/
ConfigMgr Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
DPM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
MED-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/medv/
Orchestrator Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
SCVMM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm
Server App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/serverappv
Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
System Center Essentials Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenteressentials
WSUS Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/sus/

The Forefront Server Protection blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/fss/
The Forefront Endpoint Security blog : http://blogs.technet.com/b/clientsecurity/
The Forefront Identity Manager blog : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ms-identity-support/
The Forefront TMG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/isablog/
The Forefront UAG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/edgeaccessblog/

KB: How to troubleshoot the “Needs Attention” and “Not Responding” host status in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager

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imageHere’s a new Knowledge Base article we published that talks about how to troubleshoot the “Needs Attention” and “Not Responding” host status in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager. This is one you’ll probably want to add to your Favorites.

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Summary

This article discusses how to troubleshoot the “Needs Attention” and “Not Responding” host status in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager. The “Needs Attention” and “Not Responding” host status in the VMM console occurs because the VMM Server is unable to communicate with the host machine or components (WMI, WinRM, etc.) on the host machine that are used to communicate with the VMM Server are not functioning correctly.

Common errors that are logged in the Jobs views in the VMM Console when the host status is “Needs Attention” or “Not Responding:”

Warning (2915)
The Windows Remote Management (WS-Management) service cannot process the request. The object was not found on the server (servername.domain.com).
Unknown error (0x80041002) or Unknown error (0x80338000)

Error (2916)
VMM is unable to complete the request. The connection to the agent servername.domain.com was lost.
Unknown error (0x80338126) or Unknown error (0x80338012)

Warning (12710)
VMM does not have appropriate permissions to access the Windows Remote Management resources on the server (servername.domain.com).
Unknown error (0x80338104)

Warning (13926)
Host cluster servername.domain.com was not fully refreshed because not all of the nodes could be contacted. Highly available storage and virtual network information reported for this cluster might be inaccurate.

Error (20506)
Virtual Machine Manager cannot complete the Windows Remote Management (WinRM) request on the computer servername.domain.com.

Perform the steps documented in the More Information section to identify the cause of the “Needs Attention” or “Not Responding” host status.

More Information
Step 1: Check the Health status of the Host
To check the Health status of a host, perform the following steps:

1. Open the VMM Console.
2. Select the Fabric view, right-click the host that’s experiencing issues and chose properties.
3. Within the host properties, select Status.
4. Select the category that has the Red exclamation to view the error details.

For more information on the host health check feature, please reference the following blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/scvmm/archive/2011/12/19/host-properties-new-in-vmm-2012-expanded-health-checks.aspx

Step 2: Use the Virtual Machine Manager Configuration Analyzer (VMMCA)
VMMCA is a diagnostic tool you can use to evaluate important configuration settings for computers that are either running VMM server roles or are acting as virtual machine hosts. The VMMCA scans the hardware and software configurations of the computers you specify, evaluates them against a set of predefined rules, and then provides you with error messages and warnings for any configurations that are not optimal.
To download the Virtual Machine Manager Configuration Analyzer, visit the following Microsoft website:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29309
Step 3: Verify the VMM service account is a member of the local administrators group on the host
• If the VMM service is running under a domain account, verify the domain account is a member of the local administrators group on the host.
• If the VMM is running under the local system account, verify the computer account is a member of the local administrators group on the host.
If the VMM service account is removed from the local administrators group on the host, this issue could be caused by a “Restricted Groups” group policy.
To resolve this issue, perform one of the following steps:

• Add the VMM service account to the Administrators "restricted groups" group policy setting.
• Create a new organizational unit in the domain, move the host computer object to the new OU and then configure the new organizational unit to block policy inheritance.

Step 4: Check for corrupted performance counters
Check the Application event log on the host to see if the following event is logged:

Log Name: Application
Source: Microsoft-Windows-LoadPerf
Event ID: 3012
Description:
The performance strings in the Performance registry value is corrupted when process Performance extension counter provider. The BaseIndex value from the Performance registry is the first DWORD in the Data section, LastCounter value is the second DWORD in the Data section, and LastHelp value is the third DWORD in the Data section.

If the Event ID 3012 is logged on the host machine, perform the steps documented in the following knowledge base article to rebuild the performance counters:

2554336 How to manually rebuild Performance Counters for Windows Server 2008 64bit or Windows Server 2008 R2 systems

Step 5: Check the Svchost.exe process of the Windows Remote Management service
VMM depends on the Windows Remote Management service for host communication. Therefore, the "Not Responding" status is very likely to occur because of an error in the underlying Windows Remote Management communication between the VMM server and the host computer. In this scenario, the host status is "OK" shortly after you restart the host computer. However, the status changes to "Not Responding" after three to four hours, and jobs on the VMM server fail and return an error that resembles the following:

Error (2927)
A Hardware Management error has occurred trying to contact server servername.domain.com.
Unknown error (0x803381a6)

Additionally, if you stop the Windows Remote Management service at a command prompt, this process takes much longer than usual to be completed. Sometimes, it can take up to five minutes to stop.
This problem can occur if the shared Svchost.exe process that hosts the Windows Remote Management service is experiencing issues.
To resolve this problem, configure the Windows Remote Management service to run in a separate Svchost.exe process. To do this, open an elevated command prompt, type the following command and then press ENTER.

sc config winrm type= own

Note Make sure that you type the command exactly as it appears here. Notice the space after the equal sign (=) symbol.
If the command is completed successfully, you should see the following output:
[SC] ChangeServiceConfig SUCCESS

Step 6: Increase the default values for WinRM
On each server, open an elevated command prompt, type the following commands and then press Enter after each command:
winrm set winrm/config @{MaxTimeoutms = "1800000"}
winrm set winrm/config/Service @{MaxConcurrentOperationsPerUser="400"}
net stop winrm
net start winrm
net start scvmmagent

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For the most current version of this article please see the following:

2742246 - How to troubleshoot the “Needs Attention” and “Not Responding” host status in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager

J.C. Hornbeck| Knowledge Engineer | Management and Security Division

Get the latest System Center news onFacebookandTwitter:

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App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/appv/
ConfigMgr Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
DPM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
MED-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/medv/
Orchestrator Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
SCVMM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm
Server App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/serverappv
Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
System Center Essentials Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenteressentials
WSUS Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/sus/

The Forefront Server Protection blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/fss/
The Forefront Endpoint Security blog : http://blogs.technet.com/b/clientsecurity/
The Forefront Identity Manager blog : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ms-identity- support/
The Forefront TMG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/isablog/
The Forefront UAG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/edgeaccessblog/

KB: How to troubleshoot issues when adding a Hyper-V host in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager

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imageHere’s a new Knowledge Base article we published. This one covers how to troubleshoot issues when adding a Hyper-V host in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager.

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Summary

This article covers how to troubleshoot issues when adding a Hyper-V host in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager.
Common errors that are logged in the VMM Console when an “Add virtual machine host” job fails:

Error (421)
Agent installation failed on servername.domain.com because of a WS-Management configuration error.

Error (2912)
An internal error has occurred trying to contact an agent on the servername.domain.com server.

Error (2916)
VMM is unable to complete the request. The connection to the agent servername.domain.com was lost.

Error (2927)
A Hardware Management error has occurred trying to contact server servername.domain.com.

Perform the steps documented in the More Information section to identify the cause of the issue.

More Information
Step 1: Review the VMM Agent installation log file

On the Hyper-V host, review the “vmmAgent.msi_date_time.log” file that’s located in the %systemdrive%\ProgramData\VMMLogs directory.

Note: This log file may not exist if the failure occurs early in the installation process.

Step 2: Use the Virtual Machine Manager Configuration Analyzer (VMMCA)

VMMCA is a diagnostic tool you can use to evaluate important configuration settings for computers that are either running VMM server roles or are acting as virtual machine hosts. The VMMCA scans the hardware and software configurations of the computers you specify, evaluates them against a set of predefined rules, and then provides you with error messages and warnings for any configurations that are not optimal.

To download the Virtual Machine Manager Configuration Analyzer, visit the following Microsoft website:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29309

Step 3: Verify the ports used by VMM are not blocked by a firewall

Verify the ports used by VMM to communicate with the Hyper-V host are not blocked by a firewall. By default, VMM uses the following ports to communicate with the Hyper-V host:

TCP port 443
TCP port 5985
TCP port 5986

For more information on the ports used by VMM, please reference the following TechNet article: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/library/gg710871.aspx

Step 4: Check for duplicate SPNs

Perform the steps documented in the following article to check for duplicate SPNs:

970923 Unable to add a managed host in SCVMM 2008 and SCVMM 2012, Error 2927 (0x8033809d)

Step 5: Check for corrupted performance counters on the Hyper-V host
Check the Application event log on the host to see if the following event is logged:

Log Name: Application
Source: Microsoft-Windows-LoadPerf
Event ID: 3012
Description:
The performance strings in the Performance registry value is corrupted when process Performance extension counter provider. The BaseIndex value from the Performance registry is the first DWORD in the Data section, LastCounter value is the second DWORD in the Data section, and LastHelp value is the third DWORD in the Data section.

If the Event ID 3012 is logged on the host machine, perform the steps documented in the following knowledge base article to rebuild the performance counters:

2554336 How to manually rebuild Performance Counters for Windows Server 2008 64bit or Windows Server 2008 R2 systems

Step 6: Manually install the VMM Agent on the Hyper-V host
If the Add-SCVMHost job continues to fail, manually install the agent on the Hyper-V host by performing the steps documented in the following TechNet article: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb740757.aspx

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For the most current version of this article please see the following:

2742275 - How to troubleshoot issues when adding a Hyper-V host in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager

J.C. Hornbeck| Knowledge Engineer | Management and Security Division

Get the latest System Center news onFacebookandTwitter:

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App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/appv/
ConfigMgr Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
DPM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
MED-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/medv/
Orchestrator Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
SCVMM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm
Server App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/serverappv
Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
System Center Essentials Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenteressentials
WSUS Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/sus/

The Forefront Server Protection blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/fss/
The Forefront Endpoint Security blog : http://blogs.technet.com/b/clientsecurity/
The Forefront Identity Manager blog : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ms-identity- support/
The Forefront TMG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/isablog/
The Forefront UAG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/edgeaccessblog/

Support Tip: Connecting to a VM running on a VMware cluster from VMM 2012 fails with error 20700

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toolsignHi folks, this is Vladimir from the VMM team and today I want to discuss an issue with System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM 2012) and VMware vCenter 4.1 that I saw few weeks ago. The summary of the issue is this: A VMM 2012 Self-Service user receives the following error when trying to connect via console to a VM running on a VMware cluster of two ESX 4.1 hosts either from the VMM Self-Service Portal, the VMM console, or System Center 2012 AppController:

VMConsoleParamsFetchFailure (20700)
Could not retrieve console parameters for virtual machine
%VMName;.
Ensure that the virtual machine exists and that the host %VMHostName; can be contacted, and then try the operation again.

The VMM 2012 Administrator is able to connect via the console to the same VM without any issues. My initial thought was that this is related to the permissions issue somewhere between VMM and vCenter, and my guess ended up being correct. A VMM trace showed the following:

GetVmConsoleParameters.cs,126,0x00000000,Trying to get run as account with username SCVMM.vm-41 and associated with vm 247ac427-fa90-4522-9a28-77903973aea7

ClientConnection.cs,267,0x00000000,Exception during context of an indigo call; carmine error code returned 20700
ClientConnection.cs,267,0x00000000,Microsoft.VirtualManager.Utils.CarmineException: Could not retrieve console parameters for virtual machine <VM_NAME>.

    at Microsoft.VirtualManager.Engine.VmOperations.VMConsoleOperations.GetConsoleParameters(Guid vmObjectId; ConnectionProperties connProperties)
at Microsoft.VirtualManager.Engine.Remoting.ClientConnection.GetVMConsoleParameters(Guid vmObjectId)
    at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.SyncMethodInvoker.Invoke(Object instance; Object[] inputs; Object[]& outputs)
    at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.DispatchOperationRuntime.InvokeBegin(MessageRpc& rpc)
    at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ImmutableDispatchRuntime.ProcessMessage5(MessageRpc& rpc)
    at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ImmutableDispatchRuntime.ProcessMessage4(MessageRpc& rpc)
    at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.MessageRpc.Process(Boolean isOperationContextSet)
*** Carmine error was: VMConsoleParamsFetchFailure (20700)

I have two environments. One where the issue is occurring and one where the Self-Service users are able to connect via console to VMs, so I started comparing them.

After some troubleshooting I was able to understand what is causing this. In short, when we add vCenter to VMM 2012, we have to use an account that is a local administrator on the Windows server where vCenter server is running. That account needs to be a vCenter Administrator as well. The reason why we experienced error 20700 is because VMM 2012 was not able to create and configure the required users, user roles, and permission on the vCenter server. The account used to add vCenter to VMM2012 possibly did not have all the rights that VMM needs. When the account has enough permissions, this is what VMM 2012 does on vCenter to enable VMM Self-Service users to connect via the console to VMs on the ESX hosts:

1. VMM creates a run-as account (SCVMM.vm-xx) that it uses to enable Self-Service users to connect to vCenter. It also specifies for which VMs this run-as account should be used.

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2. Then on the Windows machine where vCenter server is running, VMM creates a local user account with the same name as the run-as account created above.

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3. In vCenter, VMM creates two user roles (SCVMMSelfServiceUser and SCVMMConsoleUser), gives those user roles Console Interaction permission, adds local account SCVMM.vm-xx to the SCVMMConsoleUser role and then assigns SCVMM.vm-xx permission to the VM to which the VMM Self-Service user has access to.

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NOTE Most of these users, user roles, and permissions are created/configured when the VMM Self-Service user tries to connect to a VM via console from the Self-Service Portal, VMM console, or System Center 2012 AppController.

In my case, we resolved this issue by removing vCenter server from VMM and then adding it back using a domain account that was a local Administrator on Windows machine where vCenter running and also a vCenter Administrator. In theory, you can use a local account too, but for some reason using the local account in one of the environments caused this issue. The steps to add a vCenter server to VMM are described here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg610681

I hope you found this post interesting and helpful. See you soon!

Vladimir Petrosyan | Support Engineer | Management and Security Division

Get the latest System Center news onFacebookandTwitter:

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App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/appv/
ConfigMgr Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
DPM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
MED-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/medv/
Orchestrator Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
SCVMM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm
Server App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/serverappv
Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
System Center Essentials Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenteressentials
WSUS Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/sus/

The Forefront Server Protection blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/fss/
The Forefront Endpoint Security blog : http://blogs.technet.com/b/clientsecurity/
The Forefront Identity Manager blog : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ms-identity- support/
The Forefront TMG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/isablog/
The Forefront UAG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/edgeaccessblog/

Directions for using the SCVMM MPS Reporting tool

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image I noticed this weekend that the directions for the SCVMM MPS Reports utility are incomplete. The only instructions that come with the utility are the ones on the download site that tell you how to download and run the tool:

INSTALLING THE MPS REPORTING TOOL

=================================

>>>To install the MPS Reporting Tool

1. Download the file MPSRPT_SCVMM.exe.

2. Copy the file to the computer on which you want to diagnose problems.

3. Open an elevated Command Prompt window with administrative privileges, and then run MPSRPT_SCVMM.exe., or right-click MPSRPT_SCVMM.exe, and then click "Run as Administrator".

4. Accept the End-User License Agreement (EULA).

By default, the MPS Reporting Tool is installed in the %SystemRoot%\MPSReports\VirtualMachineManager folder.

Our own Mike Briggs shared with me his template that he sends to customers that fully explains the steps needed to use the SCVMM MPS Reports so I thought I would share this with the rest of you here. If you ever need to collect MPS Reports for Virtual Machine Manager then these are the steps to follow:

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How to use MPSRPT Tool for VMM 2008/R2

Install:

Download MPSRPT.exe to local machine and run it from the local machine.

1. The MPSRPT can be downloaded from the following link:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4e3dc013-c299-4b80-9735-64a8b9fa60c7&displaylang=en

2. You need to accept the License Terms to install

3. The tool will be installed to %windir%\MPSReports\VirtualMachineManager folder

Usage:

1. Start tracing on all the machines (you should always get the trace on the VMM Server) that you want to collect the trace from:

a. Open an elevated command window and CD to %windir%\MPSReports\VirtualMachineManager\bin directory

b. Run “StartVerbose.cmd

2. Once the StartVerbose.cmd has completed, reproduce the problem. When the problem has been reproduced, proceed to the next step.

3. Stop tracing and collect log files:

a. You only need to do this on VMM Server machine, make sure the account you logged on to the VMM Server has the admin privilege on all the machines where the logs need to be collected

c. Open a command window and CD to %windir%\MPSReports\VirtualMachineManager\bin directory

d. Run “mpsrpt.cmd /m:*

Note: This command will collect data from all hosts and the VMM Server

e. Alternatively, use the following command to specify individual machines to collect data

f. Run “mpsrpt.cmd /m:vmm_server:host_server:

4. Send the report

a. Read the readme.txt to see the list of information that are being collected

b. Find the cab files in %windir%\MPSReports\VirtualMachineManager\rpt\cab\[YYYY-MM-DD] folder

c. Send the latest cab file if you have more than one.

Hope this helps,

Steve Bucci | Senior Support Engineer

SCVMM Solution: P2V conversion may fail with error ID 3101 and "Unknown error 0x80041001"

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image When performing a physical-to-virtual (P2V) conversion of a Windows 2000 SP4 source computer using System Center Virtual Machine Manager, it may fail during the Scan System phase of the P2V wizard with the following error:

Unable to convert physical server. An internal agent error has occurred on %ComputerName;.
Ensure that the P2V agent is installed on %ComputerName; and that the P2V agent service is running, and then try the operation again.
ID: 3128
Details (Unknown error 0x80041001)
Cause

This issue may occur when the source computer, the Windows 2000 SP4 server, is missing some key WMI hotfixes.

Resolution

Download and install the following hotfixes on the Windows 2000 SP4 source computer:

  • KB834010 - A deadlock occurs when a program that uses WMI calls the LoadLibrary() or the FreeLibrary() function in Windows 2000
  • KB892294 - A WMI event notification query does not detect a user permissions change on Windows 2000 or Windows Server 2003
  • KB843527 - The Win32_SCSIController WMI class cannot obtain SCSI controller information after you install the MS04-011 security update

Mike Briggs | Senior Support Escalation Engineer

Fix: The Refresh Host Cluster job takes a long time to complete

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image Here in product support our job is not only to fix problems when they happen but to help prevent those problems from happening in the first place.  There are a lot of ways we approach that aspect of our job but one of the top ways we do this is simply by analyzing the issues that get reported to us and seeing which ones percolate up to the top.  My hope is to start blogging on a few more of these kinds of issues so that if you run into them in the future you'll have a resource on how to fix them, and also so that maybe you'll head off some of these before hitting them yourself.

With that said, here's an issue we tend to see every once in a while with SCVMM 2008 and it concerns the Refresh Host Cluster job taking a long time to complete.  Now I'll have to say that we've mentioned this one before back in November of last year but we're still seeing a few calls come in so I thought it was worth a rerun here.

Issue: The Refresh Host Cluster job takes longer than 10 minutes to complete.  How much longer?  Well, that depends.  To some it could appear to hang or lock up even though technically it's not hung, while for others it may just appear to run very slowly or take a long time in general.

Cause: This is almost always caused by the cluster having a high number of LUNs.

Resolution: If you encounter an issue like this, fortunately the resolution is simple and painless.  All you need to do is install the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 hotfix rollup per KB976244.

And even if you're not experiencing this issue, the SCVMM 2008 R2 hotfix rollup I mentioned above fixes a few other issues as well so it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to go ahead and get that installed anyway.

Hope this helps,

J.C. Hornbeck | System Center Knowledge Engineer


VMM host in Needs Attention state after installation of KB978560

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image Just a quick heads up on a cool support tip our very own Mike Briggs posted over on his blog about an issue where after the latest rollup for VMM R2 has been applied, you may need to update the agent on each managed host.  He says that until the agent has been updated, the host status displayed in the VMM console will be "Needs Attention".

For more details and instructions on how to do this see http://blogs.technet.com/mbriggs/archive/2010/02/25/host-in-needs-attention-state-after-installation-of-kb978560.aspx

J.C. Hornbeck | System Center Knowledge Engineer

Fix: System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 Maintenance mode does not stop cluster group failback

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imageYou put a failover cluster node into Maintenance mode by using the console in Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, then when you restart the node you find that the groups fail back to the host node.  Why does this happen and how can you resolve it? 

We discuss this and more in our latest System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Knowledge Base article here:

KB980863 - System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 Maintenance mode does not stop cluster group failback

J.C. Hornbeck | System Center Knowledge Engineer

Error 800704DD happening during a LAN migration/deployment of a VM or during a new virtual machine creation

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imageOur very own Michael Michael posted a great article on his blog about how to fix an issue where a SCVMM job fails with:

error: HostAgentFail (2912) ... and HRESULT: 0x800704DD

He writes that:

There is only one possible cause for this error.

  1. The VMMAgent windows service is running using an account that is not LocalSystem. If this is the case, please make the vmmagent service run as localsystem on both the VMM Server computer and on all the Host and Library server computers. Running the vmmagent with an account other than localsystem is not supported by the VMM product group.

You can check out all the details at the source:

http://blogs.technet.com/m2/archive/2010/03/03/error-800704dd-happening-during-a-lan-migration-or-deployment-of-a-vm.aspx

J.C. Hornbeck | System Center Knowledge Engineer

SCVMM reports error 10637 when Red Hat Linux selected as the Operating System

Tips for troubleshooting host connectivity issues in SCVMM

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image If you're an administrator for System Center Virtual Machine Manager, at times you may come across cases where a host shows as "Needs Attention" or "Not Responding" or even as "Intermittent connectivity loss to Host".  So how do you go about troubleshooting this type of issue?  Here are a couple tips to get you started:

1. Install the Microsoft Baseline Configuration Analyzer (MBCA) and then scan the problem server with the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and 2008 R2 Configuration Analyzer (VMMCA).
    a. Run the VMMCA and select "Windows Server-based host" and enter the name of the server experiencing this problem
    b. Upon completion, provide screenshot of report to Microsoft
    c. Install any identified missing hotfixes as directed by the VMMCA.

2. Verify that the recommended updates are applied:

KB962941: Recommended hotfixes for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008

KB2397711: Recommended hotfixes for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2

3. Identify the problem server (managed host).  Is the server currently experiencing the issue?  If so then on the problem server open an elevated command prompt and run the following command:

net stop winrm

Note the time it takes to stop this service.  It should only take a few seconds for the service to stop so anything longer could indicate a problem with winrm being backed up.  If this is the case then you may also notice that the problem can be resolved, albeit temporarily, by a host reboot.  If this is the case then the solution may be to configure the Windows Remote Management service to run in a separate Svchost.exe process. To do this, open an elevated command prompt and run the following commands:

net stop winrm

and then

sc config winrm type= own

Note: there is a space after the "=" in the line above.

If the command completes successfully you should see the following output:

[SC] ChangeServiceConfig SUCCESS

Note:There are occasions in Windows 2008 servers where the Network Location Awareness (NLA) service can become temporarily backed up.  Since NLA shares the same instance of SVCHOST with WinRM, if NLA becomes backed up then WinRM ends up in a waiting state and sometimes does not recover.  To workaround this issue with NLA we can run WinRM in its own instance of SVCHOST which is what the procedure above accomplishes.

4. Another possible cause of this issue can be if a "Restrictive Groups" group policy is removing the VMM server machine account from the local administrators group on the host computer.  This issue is discussed in further detail in KB969164.  If this is the case, move the VMM server and Host computers to a new OU that is blocking inheritance of all group policy objects.

5. Some additional causes of this problem include:
    a. The VMM Agent is not running.
    b. The anti-virus software is scanning ports or protocols

Mike Briggs | Senior Support Escalation Engineer

The App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/appv/
The WSUS Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/sus/
The SCMDM Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/mdm/
The ConfigMgr Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
The OpsMgr Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/operationsmgr/
The SCVMM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm/
The MED-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/medv/
The DPM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
The OOB Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/oob/
The Opalis Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/opalis

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Issue: The vmmservice may crash when adding a VMware vCenter environment that uses distributed switches in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008

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InfoButton We should be rolling out a KB article on this pretty soon (if it's not already) but I figured a heads up here would be a good idea too.

Symptoms

The vmmservice may crash while attempting to add a VMware vCenter environment that uses distributed switches. 

Cause

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 does not currently support the use of distributed switches.  This is a new feature from VMware introduced with VI4. 

The following output is from the vmm_mpsreport trace that shows a VMware vCenter environment being added under management by VMM.  In the following exception, note the "System.InvalidCastException: Unable to cast object of type 'Microsoft.VirtualManager.VMWareService.VirtualDeviceBackingInfo' to type 'Microsoft.VirtualManager.VMWareService.VirtualDeviceDeviceBackingInfo'."

85000 84661,20:32:16.616 03-31-2010,0x115C,0x12E8,4,WatsonExceptionReport.cs,755,0x00000000,Unhandled exception caught.,{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000},1,
85001 84662,20:32:16.616 03-31-2010,0x115C,0x12E8,4,WatsonExceptionReport.cs,756,0x00000000,Unhandled exception.,{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000},1,
85002 84663,20:32:16.617 03-31-2010,0x115C,0x12E8,4,WatsonExceptionReport.cs,756,0x00000000,"System.InvalidCastException: Unable to cast object of type 'Microsoft.VirtualManager.VMWareService.VirtualDeviceBackingInfo' to type 'Microsoft.VirtualManager.VMWareService.VirtualDeviceDeviceBackingInfo'.
85003    at Microsoft.Carmine.VMWareImplementation.VmwVMNetworkAdapter.get_ConnectedPort()
85004    at Microsoft.Carmine.VMWareImplementation.VmwVMNetworkAdapter.get_ConnectedSwitch()
85005    at Microsoft.VirtualManager.Engine.BitBos.VMRefresherBase.AddNewNICToVM(IVMNetworkAdapter vmAdapter)
85006    at Microsoft.VirtualManager.Engine.BitBos.VMRefresherBase.UpdateNICs(IVMComputerSystem vmComputer)
85007    at Microsoft.VirtualManager.Engine.BitBos.VMRefresherBase.UpdateFullVMObjectToCarmine(IVMComputerSystem vmComputer; VMData vmData; UpdateRequired updateRequired; Boolean vmObjectHasChanged)
85008    at Microsoft.VirtualManager.Engine.BitBos.VMRefresherBase.UpdateFullVMObject(IVMComputerSystem vmComputer)
85009    at Microsoft.VirtualManager.Engine.BitBos.VMRefresherBase.AddFullVMObjectToCarmine(IVMComputerSystem vmComputer)
85010    at Microsoft.VirtualManager.Engine.BitBos.VMRefresherBase.AddorUpdateNewlyFoundVM(IVMComputerSystemSummary vmComputer)
85011    at Microsoft.VirtualManager.Engine.BitBos.VMRefresherBase.AddNewVirtualMachines(List`1 hostVirtualMachines; List`1 toAdd)
85012    at Microsoft.VirtualManager.Engine.BitBos.VMRefresherBase.RunLightRefresher()
85013    at Microsoft.VirtualManager.Engine.BitBos.VMRefresherBase.UpdateHostandVMs(VMRefresherType refresherType; Guid vmObjectId; VM tempVm)
85014    at Microsoft.VirtualManager.Engine.BitBos.VmLightRefresher.RefreshData(HostReference hostRef)
85015    at Microsoft.VirtualManager.Engine.RefreshDriver`1.RefreshThreadFunction(Object obj)",{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000},1,

The following events may also be logged in the VM Manager log:

Log Name:      VM Manager
Source:        Virtual Machine Manager
Date:         
Event ID:      19999
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:     
Description:
Virtual Machine Manager (vmmservice:4676) has encountered an error and needed to exit the process. Windows generated an error report with the following parameters:
Event:VMM20
P1(appName):vmmservice
P2(appVersion):2.0.4271.0
P3(assemblyName):VMWareImplementation
P4(assemblyVer):2.0.4273.0
P5(methodName):M.C.V.VmwVMNetworkAdapter.get_ConnectedPort
P6(exceptionType):System.InvalidCastException
P7(callstackHash):f20b

Log Name:      VM Manager
Source:        Virtual Machine Manager
Date:         
Event ID:      1
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:     
Description:
System.InvalidCastException: Unable to cast object of type 'Microsoft.VirtualManager.VMWareService.VirtualDeviceBackingInfo' to type 'Microsoft.VirtualManager.VMWareService.VirtualDeviceDeviceBackingInfo'.

Resolution

This is a known issue and will be resolved with the next rollup for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 which is scheduled to be released in Q2 2010.

Mike Briggs | Senior Support Escalation Engineer

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New KB: The System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 administrator console may take a long time to load

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hotfix This Knowledge Base article actually got published a week or two ago but after looking through the site it doesn't look like I posted it here.  Just as an FYI, here's the symptom and cause and a link to the KB so you can read it in it's entirety straight from the source:

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Symptoms

If System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (SCVMM) has PRO integration with Operations Manager enabled, in certain situations the administrator console may take a long time to load and the memory footprint of vmmadmin.exe may become excessively large. 

Cause

This can occur if there are too many PRO tips in the SCVMM database.  During the initial load of the SCVMM administrator console we also load all PRO tips into the UI, both active and completed, thus potentially causing this issue.

We have a script to groom the PRO tips database, thus resolving the issue, in the KB article below:

2027023 - The System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 administrator console may take a long time to load

J.C. Hornbeck | System Center Knowledge Engineer

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New solution: Access denied error when configuring shared ISO feature on a VM using System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008

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KB When using the System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 R2 console to share an ISO file, the following error may occur:

Error (12700)
VMM cannot complete the Hyper-V operation on the %ServerName; server because of the error: User Account does not have sufficient privilege to open attachment (path to ISO file)
Error: 'General access denied error' (0x80070005).
(Unknown error (0x8001))

Recommended Action
Resolve the issue in Hyper-V and then try the operation again.

This issue may occur if the Hyper-V host was unable to read the attributes associated with the SCVMM service account in Active Directory.

For the latest information on how to troubleshoot and resolve this issue please see the following Knowledge Base article:

KB2285882 - Access denied error when configuring shared ISO feature on a VM using System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008

J.C. Hornbeck | System Center Knowledge Engineer

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Connecting to a VM in SCVMM fails with "Virtual Machine Manager lost the connection to the virtual machine..."

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KB When authenticated to the System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal (SSP), selecting a Virtual Machine (VM) hosted on Windows Hyper-V and clicking "Connect to VM" results in the following error message being displayed on a white screen:

"Virtual Machine Manager lost the connection to the virtual machine because another connection was established to this machine."

Consider the following scenario:

- 2 user accounts exist: User1 and User2
- User1 is not a configured in SCVMM anywhere
- User2 is a member of a Self-Service User role in SCVMM and is the owner of a VM
- User1 logs onto a Windows client and connects to the SSP where they authenticate as User2
- The VM owned by User2 is selected from the list and the "Connect to VM" button is clicked

In this scenario, the error message above is displayed.

The reason this can occur is because the credentials for the user account logged onto Windows (User1) are passed through instead of those used to authenticate to the SSP (User2).

By default the "Do not store my credentials" radio button is selected which causes this behavior.

User1 can be authenticated on the Hyper-V host, but Authorization Manager (AzMan) fails to find any record of their privileges to connect to the VM's console.(As authentication succeeds, it is not considered a "failed logon attempt".)

To resolve this issue, select the radio button "Store my credentials" on the logon page of the SSP. By doing this, the credentials entered here are passed through when "Connect to VM" is clicked.

For all the details and more information see our new Knowledge Base article below:

KB2288932 - Connecting to a Hyper-V VM in System Center Virtual Machine Manager using the Self Service Portal fails with "Virtual Machine Manager lost the connection to the virtual machine..."

J.C. Hornbeck | System Center Knowledge Engineer

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Common SCVMM P2V Conversion Failures Explained

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Toolbox3Our very own Jonathan Jordan just posted a great article describing a System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 support incident he worked recently where a small percentage of machines were failing during the Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversion process.  He walks through the steps he took to identify the cause and resolve the issue and shows you how you can do the same in your environment.  Whether you've had to troubleshoot the SCVMM 2008 P2V process or not, you won't want to miss this one.

Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversion is one of the most popular features of SCVMM. This said, there are a plethora of articles written to make the process easy to understand, or to resolve common problems. Last week I worked with an company that had converted around three hundred systems (nice!). Two systems were giving them a headache, so they reached out to Microsoft Support. Since they had successfully converted so many systems already, I knew the problem was almost certainly NOT with the SCVMM server or any Destination Hosts (managed Hyper-V systems) they had been using. What does this leave? The two P2V Source machine (ones to be converted). In the end this proved true…

To continue reading Jonathan's article click here.

J.C. Hornbeck | System Center Knowledge Engineer

The App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/appv/
The WSUS Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/sus/
The SCMDM Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/mdm/
The ConfigMgr Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
The SCOM 2007 Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/operationsmgr/
The SCVMM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm/
The MED-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/medv/
The DPM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
The OOB Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/oob/
The Opalis Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/opalis

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Troubleshooting OS Deployment of Hyper-V through SC VMM 2012

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OS Deployment of Hyper-V through SCVMM 2012 makes it very easy to turn bare metal machines into VM Hosts. The process deploys the OS and creates a consistent configuration to provide a layer of uniformity to your hosts even though there can be significant differences in hardware. It also makes it easy to redeploy if your host isn’t acting as expected.

In order to do this there are a lot of different technologies and components (IPMI, PXE, WDS, WinPE) that are working together to make this happen. Many of these components are setup and configured outside of the control of the VMM server, and if they aren’t setup correctly the process will fail. Once a good configuration is obtained, deploying multiple machines or redeploying to existing machines is very reliable.

In order to help understand where these configuration problems may be I’ve produced some helpful flowcharts to identify common problems that we’ve encountered when working on this feature.

First up is the UI for the add resource wizard. If you can’t find the computer you can’t deploy to it. This flowchart will help you through the process of understanding why discovery might fail. It will also help you to understand what options to choose in the UI:

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Once you complete the add resource wizard a job gets created for deployment. If all goes well you can get lunch and when you return your host will be deployed and under management by VMM. If the job fails, that’s where the next flowchart comes in…

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We welcome feedback on this process on the VMM forums in Technet. Let us know if you encountered a problem that isn’t covered here, or if this helped you to solve a problem.

Thanks!

Greg Cusanza -Program Manager-System Center Virtual Machine Manager

New KB: How to troubleshoot the "Not Responding" host status in SCVMM 2008 and in SCVMM 2008 R2

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KBHere’s another new System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Knowledge Base article we published this morning. This one tells you how to troubleshoot the "Not Responding" host status in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2:

=====

This article covers how to troubleshoot the "Not Responding" host status that appears in the Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) Administrator Console. The "Not Responding" host status indicates that the VMM server cannot communicate with the host. If this communication is interrupted, even intermittently, you can expect the host status to change in the VMM Administrator Console.

Common errors that are logged in the VMM Administrator Console (Jobs view) when a Host status is Not Responding:

Error (2911)
Insufficient resources are available to complete this operation on the server.domainname.com server.
(Not enough storage is available to complete this operation (0x8007000E))

Error (2912)
An internal error has occurred trying to contact an agent on the server.domainname.com server.
(No more threads can be created in the system (0x800700A4))

Error (2916)
VMM is unable to complete the request. The connection to the agent server.domainname.com was lost.
(Unknown error (0x80338012))

Error (2915)
The WS-Management Service cannot process the request. Object not found on the server.domainname.com server.
(Unknown error (0x80041002))

Warning (13926)
Host cluster clustername.domainname.com was not fully refreshed because not all of the nodes could be contacted. Highly available storage and virtual network information reported for this cluster might be inaccurate.

More Information

Step 1: Use Virtual Machine Manager Configuration Analyzer

The Virtual Machine Manager Configuration Analyzer is a diagnostic tool that you can use to evaluate important configuration settings for computers that either are serving or might serve VMM roles or other VMM functions. The Virtual Machine Manager Configuration Analyzer does the following:

  • Scans the hardware and software configurations of the computers that you specify
  • Evaluates these configurations against a set of predefined rules
  • Displays error messages and warnings for any configurations that are not optimal for the VMM role or other VMM functions that you have specified for the computer

System Requirements:

Before you install the Virtual Machine Manager Configuration Analyzer, you must download and install the 64-bit version of Microsoft Baseline Configuration Analyzer. To download the MBCASetup64.msi file, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=97952

Note The system requirements for Microsoft Baseline Configuration Analyzer indicate that only Windows Server 2003 is supported. However, the Virtual Machine Manager Configuration Analyzer and Microsoft Baseline Configuration Analyzer have been tested and are supported on 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

You must install and run the Virtual Machine Manager Configuration Analyzer on the computer that either currently is or will become your VMM server. To review the system requirements for the VMM server, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=133516

To download the Virtual Machine Manager Configuration Analyzer, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=02d83950-c03d-454e-803b-96d1c1d5be24&displaylang=en

Step 2: Check recommended hotfixes

On all servers that host a VMM or Hyper-V role, verify the recommended hotfixes are installed:
2397711 Recommended hotfixes for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2
962941 Recommended hotfixes for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008

Step 3: Check the Svchost.exe process of the Windows Remote Management service

Virtual Machine Manager depends very much on the Windows Remote Management service for underlying communication. Therefore, the "Not Responding" status is very likely to occur because of an error in the underlying Windows Remote Management communication between the VMM server and the host computer. In this case, the status is "OK" shortly after you restart the host computer, however the status changes to "Not Responding" after 3 to 4 hours and jobs on the VMM server fail with errors like the example below:

Error (2927)
A Hardware Management error has occurred trying to contact server server.contoso.com.
(Unknown error (0x803381a6))

Recommended Action
Check that WinRM is installed and running on server server.contoso.com. For more information use the command "winrm helpmsg hresult".

Additionally, if you stop the Windows Remote Management service at a command prompt, it takes much longer than usual to be completed. Sometimes, it can take up to five minutes to stop.

This problem can occur if the shared Svchost.exe process that hosts the Windows Remote Management service is backed up.

To resolve this problem, configure the Windows Remote Management service to run in a separate Svchost.exe process. To do this, open an elevated command prompt, type the following command, and then press ENTER.

Note Make sure that you type the command exactly as it appears here. Notice the space after the "=" symbol. c:\>sc config winrm type= own

If the command is completed successfully, you see the following output: [SC] ChangeServiceConfig SUCCESS

Step 4: Increase the default value for the WinRM timeout

1. On each server open an elevated command prompt to perform the following steps.

2. Windows 2008R2 AND Windows 2008 SP2 machines. Use the following command to increase the default value for WinRM timeout.

winrm set winrm/config @{MaxTimeoutms = "1800000"}

3. Windows 2008R2 AND Windows 2008 SP2 machines. (Windows 2008 R2 servers may report not needing this step)

winrm set winrm/config/Service @{MaxConcurrentOperations="200"}

4. Windows 2008R2 AND Windows 2008 SP2 machines. (Windows 2008 SP2 servers may report not needing this step)

winrm set winrm/config/Service @{MaxConcurrentOperationsPerUser="400"}

5. Windows 2008R2 AND Windows 2008 SP2 machines:

net stop winrm
net start winrm
net start vmmagent

Step 5: Check the VMM server computer account

This problem also occurs because the VMM server computer account is removed from the local Administrators group on the host computer. This setting may be caused by the "Restrictive Groups" Group Policy setting.

For more information about this cause, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 969164Virtual Server or Hyper-V host may have a status of "Not Responding" or "Needs Attention" due to Restricted Groups group policy setting

To resolve this problem, move the VMM server and host computers to a new organizational unit (OU) that blocks inheritance of all Group Policy objects.

Step 6: Disable TCP Offloading

You must disable TCP Offloading in Windows, in the registry, and in any network adapter teaming management software that is being used. You must check all these locations to make sure that TCP Offloading is completely disabled. This operation must be performed on both the VMM server and the host computer.

Locate all network adapters in the registry under the following subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

There are additional subkeys under this subkey that are named with four digits, starting with "0000." Locate the subkeys that show the physical network adapter names on the details pane. Find the "DriverDesc" value on the details pane. This value should contain the name of a network adapter, such as "HP NC360T PCIe Gigabit Server Adapter." For each of these subkeys, make the following changes:

Disable all vendor-specific offloading. Set values for any entries that include the word "Offload" to "0" (disabled). For example, these entries include the following:

image

To disable TCP Offloading in Windows, use the following registry entry for task offloading for the TCP/IP protocol: Subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\TCPIP\Parameters

Entry: DisableTaskOffload
Type: REG_DWORDYou can set this registry entry to 1 to disable all task-offloading from the TCP/IP transport.

Many vendors have some forms of offloading capabilities built into their teaming management software. Such offloading can appear in many forms and is usually vendor-specific.

For more information about offloading, visit the following Microsoft Developer Network Web site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa938424.aspx

Step 7: Check for other causes

Some other causes that are potential causes of this problem include the following:

  • The VMM agent is not running.
  • Some antivirus software is scanning ports or protocols.
VMM accounts membership

You can put the VMM accounts into the appropriate groups according to the following.
VMM server machine account:

  • The Administrators group on the VMM server and on all host computers
  • The Virtual Machine Manager Servers local group on the VMM server

The account for actions in VMM:

  • The Local Administrators group on the VMM server and on all host computers

=====

The information above was published today in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article written by Mike Briggs:

KB976640 - How to troubleshoot the "Not Responding" host status in SCVMM 2008 and in SCVMM 2008 R2

J.C. Hornbeck | System Center Knowledge Engineer

The App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/appv/
The WSUS Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/sus/
The SCMDM Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/mdm/
The ConfigMgr Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
The SCOM 2007 Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/operationsmgr/
The SCVMM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm/
The MED-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/medv/
The DPM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
The OOB Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/oob/
The Opalis Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/opalis
The Service Manager Team blog: http: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
The AVIcode Team blog: http: http://blogs.technet.com/b/avicode
The System Center Essentials Team blog: http: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenteressentials
The Server App-V Team blog: http: http://blogs.technet.com/b/serverappv

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