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Troubleshoot Validation as a Service

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The following are common problems unrelated to software releases and their solutions.

Local agent

The portal shows local agent in debug mode

This problem is likely because the agent is unable to send heartbeats to the service because of an unstable network connection. A heartbeat is sent every five minutes. If the service doesn't receive a heartbeat for 15 minutes, then the service considers the agent inactive and tests will no longer be scheduled on it. Check the error message in the Agenthost.log file located in the directory where the agent was started.

Note

Any tests already running on the agent will continue to run, but if the heartbeat isn't restored before the test ends, the agent will fail to update the test status or upload logs. The test will always show up as running and will need to be canceled.

Agent process on machine was shut down while executing test. What to expect?

If the agent process is shut down ungracefully, then the test that was running on it will continue to show as running. An example of an ungraceful shutdown is machine restarted and process killed (CTRL+C on the agent window is considered graceful shutdown). If the agent is restarted, then the agent will update the status of the test to canceled. If the agent isn't restarted, then the test appears as running and you must manually cancel the test.

Note

Tests within a workflow are scheduled to run sequentially. Pending tests won't get executed until tests in the running state in the same workflow complete.

VM images

Failure occurs when uploading VM image in the VaaSPreReq script

Refer to the section below on Handle slow network connectivity. It provides manual steps to upload the VM images to Azure Stack stamp.

Handle slow network connectivity

1. Verify that the environment is healthy

  1. From the DVM / jump box, check that you can successfully sign in to the admin portal using the admin credentials.

  2. Confirm that there are no alerts or warnings.

  3. If the environment is healthy, manually upload the VM images required for VaaS test runs, as per steps in the section below.

2. Download PIR image to local share in case of slow network traffic

  1. Download AzCopy from: vaasexternaldependencies(AzCopy).

  2. Extract AzCopy.zip and change to the directory containing AzCopy.exe.

  3. Open Windows PowerShell from an elevated prompt. Run the following commands:

    .\azcopy.exe /Source:'https://azstemplate.blob.core.windows.net/azurestacktemplate-public-container' /Dest:'<LocalFileShare>' /Pattern:'Server2016DatacenterFullBYOL.vhd' /NC:12 /V:azcopylog.log /Y
    .\azcopy.exe /Source:'https://azstemplate.blob.core.windows.net/azurestacktemplate-public-container' /Dest:'<LocalFileShare>' /Pattern:'Server2016DatacenterCoreBYOL.vhd' /NC:12 /V:azcopylog.log /Y
    .\azcopy.exe /Source:'https://azstemplate.blob.core.windows.net/azurestacktemplate-public-container' /Dest:'<LocalFileShare>' /Pattern:'WindowsServer2012R2DatacenterBYOL.vhd' /NC:12 /V:azcopylog.log /Y
    .\azcopy.exe /Source:'https://azstemplate.blob.core.windows.net/azurestacktemplate-public-container' /Dest:'<LocalFileShare>' /Pattern:'Ubuntu1404LTS.vhd' /NC:12 /V:azcopylog.log /Y
    .\azcopy.exe /Source:'https://azstemplate.blob.core.windows.net/azurestacktemplate-public-container' /Dest:'<LocalFileShare>' /Pattern:'Ubuntu1604-20170619.1.vhd' /NC:12 /V:azcopylog.log /Y
    .\azcopy.exe /Source:'https://azstemplate.blob.core.windows.net/azurestacktemplate-public-container' /Dest:'<LocalFileShare>' /Pattern:'Debian8_latest.vhd' /NC:12 /V:azcopylog.log /Y

Note

LocalFileShare is the share path or local path.

3. Verifying PIR Image file hash value

You can use Get-HashFile cmdlet to get the hash value for the downloaded public image repository image files to check the integrity of the images.

File Name SHA256
Server2016DatacenterFullBYOL.vhd 6ED58DCA666D530811A1EA563BA509BF9C29182B902D18FCA03C7E0868F733E9
WindowsServer2012R2DatacenterBYOL.vhd 9792CBF742870B1730B9B16EA814C683A8415EFD7601DDB6D5A76D0964767028
Server2016DatacenterCoreBYOL.vhd 5E80E1A6721A48A10655E6154C1B90E320DF5558487D6A0D7BFC7DCD32C4D9A5
Ubuntu1404LTS.vhd B24CDD12352AAEBC612A4558AB9E80F031A2190E46DCB459AF736072742E20E0
Ubuntu1604-20170619.1.vhd C481B88B60A01CBD5119A3F56632A2203EE5795678D3F3B9B764FFCA885E26CB
Debian8_latest.vhd 06F8C11531E195D0C90FC01DFF5DC396BB1DD73A54F8252291ED366CACD996C1

4. Upload VM images to a storage account

  1. Use an existing storage account or create a new storage account in Azure.

  2. Create a container to upload the images to.

  3. Use Azcopy tool to upload the VM Images from the [LocalFileShare] above (where you downloaded the VM Images to) to the container you just created.

    Important

    Change the 'Public Access Level' of the container to 'Blob (anonymous read access for blobs only)'

5. Upload VM images to Azure Stack environment

  1. Sign in as the service admin to the admin portal. You can find the admin portal URL from ECE store or your stamp information file. For instructions, see Environment parameters.

  2. Select More services > Resource Providers > Compute > VM Images.

  3. Select the + Add button at the top of the VM Images blade.

  4. Modify or check values of the following fields for the first VM image:

    Important

    Not all defaults are correct for the existing marketplace item.

    Field Value
    Publisher MicrosoftWindowsServer
    Offer WindowsServer
    OS Type Windows
    SKU 2012-R2-Datacenter
    Version 1.0.0
    OS Disk Blob URI https://<Your storage account>/<container name>/WindowsServer2012R2DatacenterBYOL.vhd

  5. Select the Create button.

  6. Repeat for the remaining VM images.

The properties of all required VM images are as follows:

Publisher Offer OS Type SKU Version OS Disk Blob URI
MicrosoftWindowsServer WindowsServer Windows 2012-R2-Datacenter 1.0.0 https://[Your storage account]/[container name]/WindowsServer2012R2DatacenterBYOL.vhd
MicrosoftWindowsServer WindowsServer Windows 2016-Datacenter 1.0.0 https://[Your storage account]/[container name]/Server2016DatacenterFullBYOL.vhd
MicrosoftWindowsServer WindowsServer Windows 2016-Datacenter-Server-Core 1.0.0 https://[Your storage account]/[container name]/Server2016DatacenterCoreBYOL.vhd
Canonical UbuntuServer Linux 14.04.3-LTS 1.0.0 https://[Your storage account]/[container name]/Ubuntu1404LTS.vhd
Canonical UbuntuServer Linux 16.04-LTS 16.04.20170811 https://[Your storage account]/[container name]/Ubuntu1604-20170619.1.vhd
Credativ Debian Linux 8 1.0.0 https://[Your storage account]/[container name]/Debian8_latest.vhd

Next steps