Trent Shoun's Blog - trentsh

A simple way to apply hotfixes to a whole bunch of servers

trentsh — Thu, 08 Aug 2013 07:01:00 GMT

I was recently challenged with how to apply a whole lot of hotfixes to a bunch of servers so I came up with this solution using PSexec from Sysinternals that can be downloaded here https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897553.aspx

First I need to download and extract all of the hotfixes I need to install

2012 Clustering https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2784261

2012 Hyper-v https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/15576.hyper-v-update-list-for-windows-server-2012.aspx

I had some challenges with getting WUSA to execute remotely so I needed to get the Hotfixes locally on each host. To accomplish this a simple batch file that makes a directory called "hotfix" on the root of C:\ for each host in my text file "ALL_hosts_Cluster_Nodes.txt"

for /f %%a in (ALL_hosts_Cluster_Nodes.txt) do mkdir c:\hotfix
for /f %%a in (ALL_hosts_Cluster_Nodes.txt) do xcopy /d/y \\srourceserver\c$\scripts\Hotfixes\*.msu /i

How to Register SMB 3.0 Shares in SCVMM 2012 SP1 Beta

trentsh — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 04:01:00 GMT

In my last blog https://blogs.technet.com/b/trentsh/archive/2012/08/31/server-2012-optimizing-smb-shares-for-hyper-v.aspx I described how to setup SMB 3.0 shares in Windows server 2012 optimized for hyper-v. In this blog I will describe how we can present these shares to hyper-v hosts in SCVMM 2012 SP1. If you don't perform these steps and try to deploy a VM where the parent VHD lives on a SMB share you will receive this error:

Error (13931)
The file \\server801\SCVMMLibrary\VHDs\ENUW2K8R2EESP1X64.vhd is in a share which is not registered to the host server802.contoso.com.

Recommended Action
Register the share to the host, and then try the operation again.

General Assumptions

1. SMB 3.0 shares have already been configured in Windows Server 2012.

2. A domain "Run As Account" has already been configured in VMM. This account will be used for host management. Because the account will be used by SCVMM to modify share and NTFS permissions as well as accessing the SMB share from the hyper-v hosts the account will need admin rights on the hyper-v host machines and the VMM server.

Open SCVMM click on fabric ->right click on storage -> and click on add storage device.

Type in the provider name and select "Native Windows WMI" as the Protocol. Click browse and select the run as account that will be used for host management and click next. Note the provider name is the name of the server hosting the SMB 3.0 share.

At the gather information dialog click next.

Select the shares you setup as SMB 3.0 shares and click next.

At the summary window click finish. Verify your VMM job completed successfully before proceeding to the next step.

While still in the Fabric tab right click one of your hosts and choose properties.

Click on Storage and then click on Add File Share.

In the File Share Path dialog you should see the SMB shares as an available selection. Select one of the shares and click ok. Repeat this process for each host and for each share.

In my next post look for some rapid provisioning stuff through SCVMM 2012 SP1

Hope this helps!

Trent
CISSP, ITILv3, MCP

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights

Server 2012 Optimizing SMB shares for Hyper-v & Rapid Provisioning

trentsh — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 06:25:00 GMT

Windows Server 2012 gives us the ability to use SMB 3.0 file shares as storage for hyper-v. You can store VHD's, virtual machine configuration files, and snapshots on the SMB 3.0 shares. By using SMB 3.0 the server has the ability to transmit more data simultaneously over multiple NIC's or paths. The beauty of SMB 3.0 is that all of this requires no extra configuration. All you have to have is a NIC in the server hosting the SMB share that supports RSS and your SMB client will automatically detect and use multiple network connections. To read why SMB 3.0 and multi-channel is so great please check out the following blog; https://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2012/05/14/the-basics-of-smb-multichannel-a-feature-of-windows-server-2012-and-smb-3-0.aspx

Below is a quick example on how to build a VM using the native 2012 hyper-v cmdlts with a parent VHD that resides on an SMB 3.0 share and the child disk lives on a local drive attached to the hyper-v server d:\images\. The parent VHD below is just a sysprep'd vhd running Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise.

$Hypervhost = "hyper-v-host1"
$vmname = "testserver"
$ParentPath = "\\smbserver\ParentVHDs\ENUW2K8R2EESP1X64.vhd"
$childpath = "d:\images"

# Create the VM without a disk
New-VM –Name $vmname –MemoryStartupBytes 1024MB -Path $childpath\$vmname -Verbose
# Create the Differencing Disk
New-VHD –ParentPath $parentpath –Path $childpath\$vmname\$vmname.vhd -Differencing
# Add the disk to the VM
Add-VMHardDiskDrive $vmname -Path $childpath\$vmname\$vmname.vhd
# Start it
start-vm $vmname

Using the script above you can build a VM in a matter of seconds!

How to create your SMB share.

Considerations

How do you plan to use your SMB 3.0 shares?

If you plan to use your SMB share for a parent VHD scenario you should optimize the raid volume for reads. If the share will be used for a child VHD or just standard virtual machines the raid volume needs to be optimized for read+write.

Assumptions

Raid volumes have already been presented to the server.

File and Storage Services server role is already installed.

1. Open Server Manager --> File and Storage Services and select Shares --> New Share and click next.

2. Under "Select Profile" select "SMB Share - Applications" and select next. Note the description indicates this is the best option for hyper-v

3. Type in your share location and click next.

4. Type in your share name and click next.

5. In the "Other Settings" dialog select next.

6. In the "Permissions" dialog select "Customize permissions" - This is where you are going to give the hyper-v host permissions to the share.

7. Click "Add".

Click "Select a principle" then click "Object Types..."

Select "Computers" and click ok. Search for your hyper-v computer name and click ok.

With your hyper-v server selected as the principle - Select Full Control and click ok.

Click Create

Hope this helps!

Trent
CISSP, ITILv3, MCP

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights

SCVMM & BITS problems

trentsh — Tue, 22 May 2012 05:43:00 GMT

Hi Everyone,

We ran into an issue a while back I thought I would share.

When trying to deploy a sysprep'd OS using a template in SCVMM (System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1) , or attempting to modify an existing template in SCVMM we were getting the following error in the VMM job log:

Error: An internal error has occurred trying to contact an agent on the
server.domainname.com server. (Error ID: 2912, Detailed Error:
Unknown error (0x80041001))

Error (0x80041001)) happens to be a generic WMI error so unfortunately wasn't much help.

After hours of investigation we discovered there were corrupt jobs that were preventing WMI from returning the enumeration request from the BITS provider.
"Bitsadmin /list /allusers" shows coruppts jobs.

Here is an example of the suspended jobs

2C53FBF4-F0DC-4037-B295-0363A0F5946D}
'test1' SUSPENDED 0 / 0 0 / 0

{16943DBE-621E-43B3-A85C-1D669C9C821D}
'BITS Transfer' SUSPENDED 0 / 0 0 / 0

{0350BACF-9A77-461C-9129-3CA35A862931}
'myDownloadJob' SUSPENDED 0 / 0 0 / 0

{09AD6EE9-B234-46B4-ACE0-C1CB3D78CFA4}
'Java Update' SUSPENDED 0 / 0 0 / 0

Resoultion was to remove the corrupted bits jobs.

for /f %x in ('bitsadmin /list /allusers ^| find /i "{"') do bitsadmin /cancel %x

Hope this helps!

Trent
CISSP, ITILv3, MCP

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

vmdk to vhd conversion using SCVMM 2008 R2

trentsh — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 07:17:00 GMT

Problem: Unable to convert ESX VM to hyper-v based VM using System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

Description: I recently had a customer who needed to to convert a VM created in VMWare. The VM was exported from ESX and given to me with the following files:

builtin-ZIP.clone-VM001-flat.vmdk
clone-VM001.vmdk
clone-VM001.vmsd
clone-VM001.vmx
clone-VM001.vmxf
clone-VM001_1-flat.vmdk
clone-VM001_1.vmdk
clone-VM001_2-flat.vmdk
clone-VM001_2.vmdk
vmware-4.log
vmware-5.log
vmware-6.log
vmware-7.log
vmware-8.log
vmware-9.log

Following the procedures in https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb963721.aspx I copied the files into my SCVMM library. I ran a refresh job on the library and saw the following errors in the log:

Warning (10810)

Warning (10810)

Unable to import the Virtual Machine \\218443HYPER.218443DOM.com\MSSCVMMLibrary\clone-VM001.vmx due to errors encountered while attempting to import the file.

Warning (10801)

Unable to import virtual hard disk \\218443HYPER.218443DOM.com\MSSCVMMLibrary\clone-VM001.vmdk because one of its data files, \\218443HYPER.218443DOM.com\MSSCVMMLibrary\clone-VM001-flat.vmdk, could not be imported.

Warning (10804)

Unable to import \\218443HYPER.218443DOM.com\MSSCVMMLibrary\builtin-ZIP-clone-VM001-flat.vmdk because of a syntax error in the file.

Interesting. I then tried to run the VMWare Converter. I received the following error:

"The Object or item referenced could not be found"

Resolution:

The VMX file contains all of the relevent configuration needed for the virtual machine including the VMDK file names. After looking into this a bit further I found that one of the VMDK's had been renamed while preparing the files for compression and transfer. I renamed the file back to it original state builtin-ZIP.clone-VM001-flat.vmdk-->clone-VM001-flat.vmdk. After the rename I refreshed the library the import was successful.

I was now able to run the "Convert Virtual Machine Wizard" against my ESX based VM.

Trent
CISSP, ITILv3, MCP

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

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FASTSearch for sharepoint The remote server returned an error: (502) Bad Gateway.

trentsh — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 05:55:00 GMT

Setup for a non-admin node for FASTSearch for Sharepoint 2010 was failing. Deployment.xml, IPSec rules on the admin node all looked correct. Connectivity and name resoultion all appeard to be solid in the domain. Examining the installer logs located in C:\FASTSearch\var\log\installer were not very much help. The logs show that when connectivity to the admin node failed the installer starting rolling back the changes.

Further troubleshooting I tried running Set-FASTSearchIPSec and received the following error:

Set-FASTSearchIPSec : The remote server returned an error: (502) Bad Gateway.
At line:1 char:20
+ Set-FASTSearchIPsec <<<< -Create -Verbose
    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [Set-FASTSearchIPSec], SystemE
   xception
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : The remote server returned an error: (502) Bad G
   ateway.,Microsoft.SharePoint.Search.Extended.Installer.Mahasen.Cmdlets.Set
IPSecCommand

Bad Gateway? Interesting.

Resoultion:

Since FAST is configured to use a service account I logged into both the admin node, and the future non-admin node with the service account credintials. I cleared the the "automaticly detect proxy settings" on both nodes. I was now able to run the Set-FASTSearchIPSec with the following results:

cmdlet Set-FASTSearchIPSec at command pipeline position 1

Supply values for the following parameters:

(Type !? for Help.)

UserName: 207195DOM\FAST

Password: ********

VERBOSE: Configuring FASTSearch IP Security

VERBOSE: Validating input parameters

VERBOSE: Checking if current user is in local Administrators group...

VERBOSE: Successfully verified that current user is in local Administrators

group

VERBOSE: Testing Domain user credentials...

VERBOSE: Successfully tested domain user credentials

VERBOSE: Successfully validated input parameters

VERBOSE: Reading hostconfiguration...

VERBOSE: Successfully read hostconfiguration

VERBOSE: Removing existing IP Security rules...

VERBOSE: Successfully removed existing IP Security rules

VERBOSE: Creating IP Security rules...

VERBOSE: Setting up IPSec to admin node...

VERBOSE: Successfully created IPSec to admin node

VERBOSE: Downloading deployment.xml from admin node...

VERBOSE: Successfully downloaded deployment.xml from admin node

VERBOSE: Removing IPSec rules to admin node...

VERBOSE: Successfully removed IPSec rules to admin node

VERBOSE: Parsing deployment.xml...

VERBOSE: Successfully pared deployoment.xml

VERBOSE: Setting up IPSec to all nodes...

VERBOSE: Successfully created IPSec to all nodes

VERBOSE: Successfully created IP Security rules

VERBOSE: Successfully finished configuring IP Security

Configuration wizard now completes successfully.

Trent
CISSP, ITILv3, MCP

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

[Error number: 0x8024800C] running Windows update

trentsh — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 12:56:00 GMT

Trent Here,

I recently ran into a problem on some machines that were failing to run windows update. The web service would fail with the following [Error number: 0x8024800C]

I found several posts related to connection errors between a proxy server and firewall settings however none of these applied to my scenario. Looking at the windowsupdate.log file didn't help much either:

I was able to find the following: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc720442(WS.10).aspx on the Windows Update Agent Result codes

Data Store
0x8024800C WU_E_DS_LOCKTIMEOUTEXPIRED The data store section could not be locked within the allotted time.

So the "Data Store" is actually C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore. Interesting.  https://support.microsoft.com/kb/971058.

The article was not identicle to what I was seeing but gave me some good ideas

***************Resolution***************

From a command line - net stop "Automatic Updates"

del C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\

net start "Automatic Updates"

After that I simply ran windowsupate again and it worked perfectly.

Trent
CISSP, ITILv3, MCP

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.