System Center: Virtual Machine Manager Engineering Team Blog

Update Rollup 2 for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 now available

J.C. Hornbeck — Tue, 29 May 2012 21:41:52 GMT

This article describes the installation instructions for Update Rollup 2 for Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and the issues that are fixed in this update rollup.

Update Rollup 2 for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1 consists of two update packages. Follow the installation instructions to install the updates for the Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) server and Self-Service Portal.

Issues that are fixed in Update Rollup 2

Virtual Machine Manager server update (KB2691812)

The VMM service leaks memory when you manage a Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V cluster that has HP Cluster Extension Software (CLX) installed.
This update package also includes the fixes that are documented in the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

2562466 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2562466/ ) Description of the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1 hotfix rollup package: July 12, 2011

Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal update (KB2701207)

The Self-Service Portal may not always display all virtual machines if the self-service user has more than 50 virtual machines assigned to them.

For all the details and a download link please see the following:

2691812 - Description of the Update Rollup 2 for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 Service Pack 1

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

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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: Placing a highly available virtual machine on an ESXi Cluster in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager fails

J.C. Hornbeck — Thu, 24 May 2012 18:38:01 GMT

Here’s a new Knowledge Base article we published. This one talks about an issue where placing a highly available virtual machine on an ESXi Cluster in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager fails.

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Symptoms

When trying to place a highly available virtual machine on an ESXi 4.0 cluster managed by System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager, the Virtual Machine Manager placement engine blocks the placement with the following error:

The virtual machine <name of the VM> is configured as highly available but the selected host in not highly available.

Cause

This will occur if the VMware cluster is configured as non-highly available in the VMware vCenter server. You can verify this using the steps below:
1. Open vSphere client
2. Right-click on the cluster
3. Click Edit Settings
4. Click Cluster Features. There, the option "Turn ON VMware HA" is not selected

Resolution

To resolve this issue complete the steps below:
1. Open vSphere client
2. Right-click on the cluster
3. Click Edit Settings
4. Click Cluster Features
5. Select the option "Turn ON VMware HA"
6. Refresh the ESXi cluster in the System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager console.

More Information

For more information see the follow:

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1008025

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

2712454 - Placing a highly available virtual machine on an ESXi Cluster in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager fails

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

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KB: Regional settings default to English when deploying a virtual machine using a template on System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager

J.C. Hornbeck — Wed, 23 May 2012 20:28:03 GMT

Here’s a new Knowledge Base article we published. This one talks about an issue where Regional settings default to English when deploying a virtual machine using a template on System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager.

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Symptoms

Consider the following scenario:
· A virtual machine is configured to use regional settings other than en-US (example: ja-JP or fr-FR)
· A VM template is created from this virtual machine using System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012.
· Virtual machines that are created using this template are configured to use the en-US regional settings.

Cause

Deploying virtual machines using a template in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 will override the guest OS language setting with en-US by default.

Resolution

To work around this issue, perform the following steps:
1. Launch the VMM Console.
2. Click on Settings option.
3. Click on PowerShell and execute the below commands on respective Template.
4. $template = Get-SCVMtemplate | where {$_.Name -eq "Template_Name"}
5. $settings = $template.UnattendSettings;
6. $settings.add("oobeSystem/Microsoft-Windows-International-Core/UserLocale","cy-GB");
7. $settings.add("oobeSystem/Microsoft-Windows-International-Core/SystemLocale","cy-GB");
8. $settings.add("oobeSystem/Microsoft-Windows-International-Core/UILanguage","cy-GB");
9. $settings.add("oobeSystem/Microsoft-Windows-International-Core/InputLocale","0452:00000452");
10. Set-SCVMTemplate -VMTemplate $template -UnattendSettings $settings

NOTE For Steps 6-9, the regional settings will vary based on the language. Please refer to the following sites for the regional settings that should be used for each language:

Language Pack Default Values
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766191(v=ws.10).aspx

Default Input Locales
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766503(v=ws.10).aspx

More Information

Scripts used during MMS 2012 PowerShell session:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/hectorl/archive/2012/04/16/fi-b322-scripts-used-during-mms-2012-powershell-session.aspx

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

2709539 - Regional settings default to English when deploying a virtual machine using a template on System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager

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

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KB: The System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager console terminates unexpectedly with NullReferenceException

J.C. Hornbeck — Wed, 23 May 2012 17:44:58 GMT

Here’s a new Knowledge Base article we published. This one talks about an issue where the SCVMM 2012 console terminates with NullReferenceException after adding an ESX 4.1 host.

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Symptoms

After adding an ESX 4.1 host to System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) fabric, the VMM console may terminate unexpectedly.
In reviewing the application log you find the following event:

Log Name: Application
Source: Windows Error Reporting
Event ID: 1001
Task Category: None
Level: Information
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Description:
Fault bucket , type 0
Event Name: VMM20
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0

Problem signature:
P1: vmmservice
P2: 3.0.6019.0
P3: E.Adhc.Operations
P4: 3.0.6019.0
P5: M.V.E.A.VMWareESXHostDataProperties.GetHostManagementPorts
P6: System.NullReferenceException
P7: 6b59
P8:
P9:
P10:

Log Name: Application
Source: Windows Error Reporting
Event ID: 1001
Task Category: None
Level: Information
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Description:
Fault bucket , type 0
Event Name: VMM20
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0

Problem signature:
P1: vmmservice
P2: 3.0.6019.0
P3: VMWareImplementation
P4: 3.0.6005.0
P5: M.C.V.VmwVMService.PopulateDistributedNetworkingData
P6: System.NullReferenceException
P7: 3b81
P8:
P9:
P10:

NOTE To ensure you are encountering the issue discussed here, verify that the values shown in the Windows Error report log have the same values for P5 and P6 as seen in one of the above examples

Cause

This is a known issue in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager. The issue is related to the absence of a standard VMware virtual switch (vSwitch) on the VMware hosts. The VMM refresher fails to handle such a configuration.

Resolution

To verify the problem host perform the following steps:

Open vSphere Client
- Open Hosts and Clusters
- Select Host, Go to Configuration tab
- Select Networking, you should see no vSphere Standard Switches.

To workaround this issue, create a vSwitch on each failing host using the VMware management tools such as vSphere client.

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

2709961 - The System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager console terminates unexpectedly with NullReferenceException

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

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Upcoming Webcast Series: Bare Metal to Private Cloud

Travis Wright MSFT — Wed, 23 May 2012 02:42:42 GMT

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time with customers over the last 6-12 months helping them plan out and deploy their first private clouds managed by System Center 2012. To help people get started faster I headed into the Enterprise Engineering Center (EEC) on the Redmond campus, arranged for some really nice hardware, and set up a System Center managed private cloud from bare metal all the way up. All along the way I recorded everything I did. In this 8 part webcast series I will show you some of the best practices and process for getting start with your System Center 2012 managed private cloud. We will deploy a Hyper-V host cluster, Virtual Machine Manager, Operations Manager, Service Manager, Orchestrator, the Cloud Service Process Management Pack, integrate them all together and do so in a high performance and high availability configuration.

The web cast series starts next week and will be every Tuesday and Thursday at 11:00 AM Redmond time from May 29th through June 28th. We will take the week of TechEd North America off. All of the web casts will be available on demand after the initial showing.

Please register for the sessions, add them to your calendar, and join me over the next few weeks as we go from Bare Metal to Private Cloud!

-Travis

5/29/2012 11:00:00 AM - Bare Metal to Private Cloud (Part 1 of 8): Beginning with the End in Mind

http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9809577 or http://bit.ly/JTGtJK

Abstract:

In this session, we take a look at the end state of managing a private cloud with Microsoft System Center, including the Cloud Services management pack. The sessions that follow this session describe how to go from bare metal to a private cloud managed by System Center.
_____________

5/31/2012 11:00:00 AM - Bare Metal to Private Cloud (Part 2 of 8): Hardware and Prerequisite Software Platform

http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9809578 or http://bit.ly/KJc41E

Abstract:

In this session, we take a look at the hardware used for these sessions as examples of the kind of hardware that you can use to run a private cloud. We’ll also discuss how to install and configure the prerequisite software, such as the Windows Server operating system, SQL Server data management software, and Active Directory Domain Services.
_____________

6/5/2012 11:00:00 AM - Bare Metal to Private Cloud (Part 3 of 8): Clustering Hyper-V and Installing a Highly Available Virtual Machine Manager Cluster

http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9809579 or http://bit.ly/KvgVAM

Abstract:

In this session, we take a look at how to create a Hyper-V host cluster and install a highly available cluster by using Virtual Machine Manager, a component of Microsoft System Center 2012.

_____________

6/7/2012 11:00:00 AM - Bare Metal to Private Cloud (Part 4 of 8): Configuring System Center 2012 - Virtual Machine Manager

http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9809580 or http://bit.ly/KlsCYU

Abstract:

In this session, we talk about how to configure Virtual Machine Manager, a component of Microsoft System Center 2012. We explore how to deploy agents, create a host group, create a cloud, and create virtual networks.

_____________

6/19/2012 11:00:00 AM - Bare Metal to Private Cloud (Part 5 of 8): Installing and Configuring System Center 2012 - Operations Manager

http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9809581 or http://bit.ly/J2WDgE

Abstract:

In this session, we show how to install a highly available Microsoft System Center 2012 - Operations Manager and deploy agents to manage the private cloud.

_____________

6/21/2012 11:00:00 AM - Bare Metal to Private Cloud (Part 6 of 8): Installing and Configuring System Center 2012 - Service Manager

http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9809582 or http://bit.ly/Ms8GtP

Abstract:

In this session, we show how to install a highly available Microsoft System Center 2012 Service Manager, including the configuration management database (CMDB), data warehouse, reporting, self-service portal, and service catalog.

_____________

6/26/2012 11:00:00 AM - Bare Metal to Private Cloud (Part 7 of 8): Installing and Configuring System Center 2012 - Orchestrator

http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9809583 or http://bit.ly/JXQgPA

Abstract:

In this session, we show how to install a highly available Microsoft System Center 2012 - Orchestrator and installing the System Center and other integration packs for automated administration of the private cloud.

_____________

6/28/2012 11:00:00 AM - Bare Metal to Private Cloud (Part 8 of 8): Integrating System Center 2012

http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9809584 or http://bit.ly/JcGHxd

Abstract:

In this session, we configure the many integration points between the Microsoft System Center components and also between System Center and Active Directory Domain Services.

KB: Deploying templates to create new VMs using System Center Virtual Machine Manager fails with Error 13204

J.C. Hornbeck — Thu, 17 May 2012 17:03:42 GMT

Here’s a new Knowledge Base article we published this morning. This one describes an issue where deploying templates to create new VMs using System Center Virtual Machine Manager fails with Error 13204.

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Symptoms

When deploying templates to create new virtual machines (VMs) using System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (VMM), you may receive the following error in the VMM Admin Console:

Error 13204
Boot Configuration Data (BCD) WMI provider is not installed on the Virtual Machine Manager Server.
Install the BCD WMI provider on %ServerName; and then try the operation again.

You also notice that the deployment of VMs fails for all hosts and that the failure also happens for most other templates.
A VMM Trace will show results similar to:

00025010 11:18:35 AM [6008] at Microsoft.Carmine.WSManWrappers.ErrorContextParameterHelper.ThrowTranslatedCarmineException(ManagementException me)
00025011 11:18:35 AM [6008] at Microsoft.Carmine.WMIWrappers.WMIObject.GetMethodParameters(String methodName)
00025012 11:18:35 AM [6008] at Microsoft.Carmine.WMIWrappers.BcdStore.OpenStore(ManagementScope mgmtScope, String File, BcdStore& Store)
00025013 11:18:35 AM [6008] at Microsoft.VirtualManager.Engine.VmOperations.BCD.Store..ctor(WSManConnectionParameters connParams, String storePath)
00025014 11:18:35 AM [6008] *** Carmine error was: HostAgentWMIFail (3154); HR: 0x80131501
00025015 11:18:35 AM [6008] 1778.0994::02/04-19:18:35.468#16:BcdUtil.cs(1248):
00025016 11:18:35 AM [6008] 1778.0994::02/04-19:18:35.468#16:BcdUtil.cs(1248): Microsoft.VirtualManager.Engine.VmOperations.BCD.BCDWmiProviderNotInstalledException: Error in the application.
00025017 11:18:35 AM [6008] at Microsoft.VirtualManager.Engine.VmOperations.BCD.Store.HandleEx(WSManProviderException wpe)
00025018 11:18:35 AM [6008] at Microsoft.VirtualManager.Engine.VmOperations.BCD.Store..ctor(WSManConnectionParameters connParams, String storePath)
00025019 11:18:35 AM [6008] at Microsoft.VirtualManager.Engine.VmOperations.BCD.BCDFixup.ReadBootManager()
00025020 11:18:35 AM [6008] at Microsoft.VirtualManager.Engine.VmOperations.BCD.BCDFixup..ctor(String bcdFileDir, String bcdFileName, WSManConnectionParameters tgtConnectionParameters, String tgtDevice, UpdateDeploymentCheckpointDelegate checkpointDelegate)
00025021 11:18:35 AM [6008] *** Carmine error was: BcdWmiProviderNotInstalled (13204); 0

Cause

This can occur if there is WMI corruption on the VMM server. Examining the local WMI Control properties displays the following:

· Win32_processor: WMI: Invalid namespace
· Win32_WMISetting: WMI: Invalid namespace
· Win32_OperatingSystem: WMI: Invalid namespace

Resolution

To resolve this issue, rebuild WMI on the VMM server.

Below are the steps to fix the issue on Windows Server 2008:

1. Open an elevated command prompt.
2. Verify the WMI repository is not corrupt by running the following command:

winmgmt /verifyrepository

If the repository is not corrupted, a “WMI Repository is consistent” message will be returned. If you get something else, go to step 3. If the repository is consistent, perform a repair.

3. Run the following commands to repair WMI:

winmgmt /salvagerepository

If the repository salvage fails to work, then run the following command to see if it resolves the issue:

winmgmt /resetrepository

After the last command, there should be a “WMI Repository has been reset” message returned that verifies the command was successful.

Below are the steps to fix the issue on Windows Server 2003:

1. Stop WMI service
2. From an elevated command prompt run the following:

cd %windir%\system32\wbem

3. Re-register dlls by running the following command:

for /f %s in ('dir /b *.dll') do regsvr32 /s %s

4. Re-register provider host by running the following command:

wmiprvse /regserver

5. Re-register WMI service by running the following command:
winmgmt /regserver

6. Restart the WMI service
7. Recompile the mofs by running the following command:

for /f %s in ('dir /b *.mof *.mfl') do mofcomp %s

8. Restart the WMI service
9. Restart the VMM server

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

2708922 - Deploying templates to create new VMs using System Center Virtual Machine Manager fails with Error 13204

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

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KB: Viewing a service on System Center 2012 App Controller as a self-service user may fail with a “Retrieved data is incomplete” warning

J.C. Hornbeck — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:41:41 GMT

Here’s a new Knowledge Base article we published. This one describes an App Controller issue where viewing a service fails with “Retrieved data is incomplete”.

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Symptoms

On System Center 2012 App Controller, a self-service user is unable to view a service that includes a computer tier with a load balancer. When the user attempts to view the service in App Controller, they receive a “Retrieved data is incomplete” warning. Viewing the details of the warning displays the following message:

Category: Warning
Message: Retrieved data is incomplete.
Details: Category: Critical
Message: Microsoft.SystemCenter.CloudManager.Providers.ProviderException
Description: An unexpected error from VMM was encountered while processing the request.
Details: Category: Critical
Message: 11418–ObjectsInaccessible
Description: You do not have permission to access one or more of the objects required by this operation.
Web error status: UnknownError
Web response description: Internal Server Error
Web response status code: InternalServerError

Cause

This is a known issue in System Center 2012 App Controller.

Resolution

To work around this issue, perform one of the following steps:

· To view the service in App Controller, logon to App Controller using an account that’s a member of the Administrators role.

· To view the service as a self-service user, use the VMM console.

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

2709415 - Viewing a service on System Center 2012 App Controller as a self-service user may fail with a “Retrieved data is incomplete” warning

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

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KB: How to reinstall the System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager agent on a host with services deployed

J.C. Hornbeck — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:55:05 GMT

Here’s a new Knowledge Base article we published. This one describes an event you may see when deleting a Favorite in AVIcode or System Center 2012 Operations Manager.

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Symptoms

Scenario: A Hyper-V host is managed by System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) and it is hosting service templates. You want to reinstall the VMM agent on the host.

If you remove the host from VMM it will retain the VM information but all service template information will be lost. This will prevent any updates to service templates as well as scale out actions.

Cause

This is a known issue in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager. Removing a host from a VMM console causes all service template information to be removed for that host.

Resolution

Logon directly on to the host where you want to reinstall the agent. Remove the agent and reinstall it manually using the latest agent files. On the VMM server, perform an add host action and select re-associate. This will re-register the host in VMM and the service templates will be restored.

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

2705504 - How to reinstall the System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager agent on a host with services deployed

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

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KB: P2V fails with GPT partitions in System Center Virtual Machine Manager

J.C. Hornbeck — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:32:56 GMT

Here’s a new Knowledge Base article we published. This one discusses how VMM does not support GPT disks on P2V targets and that to successfully migrate a machine with a GPT disk, you must first convert the disk to MBR format.

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Symptoms

A physical to virtual conversion (P2V) may fail in Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 (VMM) if the source machine contains a GUID Partition Table (GPT) formatted disk. In this scenario, the conversion fails with an error similar to the following:

Log Name: System
Source: Service Control Manager
Event ID: 7031
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
Description:
The Virtual Machine Manager P2V Agent service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 1 time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 0 milliseconds: Restart the service.

Log Name: Application
Source: Application Error
Event ID: 1000
Task Category: (100)
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
Description:
Faulting application name: vmmP2VAgent.exe, version: 2.0.4271.0, time stamp: 0x4a7a0b17
Faulting module name: vmmP2VAgent.exe, version: 2.0.4271.0, time stamp: 0x4a7a0b17
Exception code: 0xc000000d
Fault offset: 0x0000000000038e45
Faulting process id: 0x6ec
Faulting application start time: 0x01cbbcc8d4befeb6
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 P2V Agent\bin\vmmP2VAgent.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 P2V Agent\bin\vmmP2VAgent.exe
Report Id: 1272adba-28bc-11e0-89a1-e41f136885b0

A VMM trace will show patterns similar to the following:

Variation 1:

3488 00003486 120.73740387 [4608] 1200.1610::01/28-18:29:10.912:WsmanAPIWrapper.cs(1415): WSMAN: URL: [http://servername:80] Verb: [INVOKE], method: [GetLUNIDFromFSPath], resource: [http://schemas.microsoft.com/wbem/wsman/1/wmi/root/scvmmaccelerator/VirtualizationSANAccelerator]
3489 00003487 120.73745728 [4608] 1200.1610::01/28-18:29:10.912:WsmanAPIWrapper.cs(544): HostSessionCache: elements for [S-1-5-18-servername]: [100]
3490 00003488 120.73786926 [4608] 1200.1610::01/28-18:29:10.912:WsmanAPIWrapper.cs(593): WsmanAPIWrapper::CreateSession: going to use custom timeout for wsman operations: 300 secs.
3491 00003489 120.84464264 [4608] 1200.1610::01/28-18:29:11.021:BitDeploymentSubtask.cs(771): MapSANWMIErrorCodeToCarmineError: Return value from agent CARMINE_SAN_WMI_NO_UNIQUE_LUN_IDENTIFIER, Mapped carmine error code DeployVMNoUniqueID
3492 00003490 120.84486389 [4608] 1200.1610::01/28-18:29:11.021:HostProperties.cs(521): Found Disk: UniqueID:0, Name:\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE4, Capacity:624438581760
3493 00003491 120.84495544 [4608] 1200.1610::01/28-18:29:11.021:WsmanAPIWrapper.cs(1415): WSMAN: URL: [http://servername:80] Verb: [INVOKE], method: [GetLUNIDFromFSPath], resource: [http://schemas.microsoft.com/wbem/wsman/1/wmi/root/scvmmaccelerator/VirtualizationSANAccelerator]
3494 00003492 120.84500885 [4608] 1200.1610::01/28-18:29:11.021:WsmanAPIWrapper.cs(544): HostSessionCache: elements for [S-1-5-18-servername]: [100]
3495 00003493 120.84546661 [4608] 1200.1610::01/28-18:29:11.021:WsmanAPIWrapper.cs(593): WsmanAPIWrapper::CreateSession: going to use custom timeout for wsman operations: 300 secs.
3496 00003494 120.96246338 [4608] 1200.1610::01/28-18:29:11.146:BitDeploymentSubtask.cs(771): MapSANWMIErrorCodeToCarmineError: Return value from agent CARMINE_SAN_WMI_NO_UNIQUE_LUN_IDENTIFIER, Mapped carmine error code DeployVMNoUniqueID
3497 00003495 120.96269989 [4608] 1200.1610::01/28-18:29:11.146:HostProperties.cs(521): Found Disk: UniqueID:0, Name:\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE5, Capacity:624438581760
3498 00003496 120.96279144 [4608] 1200.1610::01/28-18:29:11.146:WsmanAPIWrapper.cs(1415): WSMAN: URL: [http://servername:80] Verb: [INVOKE], method: [GetLUNIDFromFSPath], resource: [http://schemas.microsoft.com/wbem/wsman/1/wmi/root/scvmmaccelerator/VirtualizationSANAccelerator]
3499 00003497 120.96284485 [4608] 1200.1610::01/28-18:29:11.146:WsmanAPIWrapper.cs(544): HostSessionCache: elements for [S-1-5-18-servername]: [100]
3500 00003498 120.96331024 [4608] 1200.1610::01/28-18:29:11.146:WsmanAPIWrapper.cs(593): WsmanAPIWrapper::CreateSession: going to use custom timeout for wsman operations: 300 secs.
3501 00003499 121.08226776 [4608] 1200.1610::01/28-18:29:11.271:BitDeploymentSubtask.cs(771): MapSANWMIErrorCodeToCarmineError: Return value from agent CARMINE_SAN_WMI_NO_UNIQUE_LUN_IDENTIFIER, Mapped carmine error code DeployVMNoUniqueID
3502 00003500 121.08245850 [4608] 1200.1610::01/28-18:29:11.271:HostProperties.cs(521): Found Disk: UniqueID:0, Name:\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE6, Capacity:624455032320
3503 00003501 121.08254242 [4608] 1200.1610::01/28-18:29:11.271:WsmanAPIWrapper.cs(1415): WSMAN: URL: [http://servername:80] Verb: [INVOKE], method: [GetLUNIDFromFSPath], resource: [http://schemas.microsoft.com/wbem/wsman/1/wmi/root/scvmmaccelerator/VirtualizationSANAccelerator]
3504 00003502 121.08259583 [4608] 1200.1610::01/28-18:29:11.271:WsmanAPIWrapper.cs(544): HostSessionCache: elements for [S-1-5-18-servername]: [100]
3505 00003503 121.08300781 [4608] 1200.1610::01/28-18:29:11.271:WsmanAPIWrapper.cs(593): WsmanAPIWrapper::CreateSession: going to use custom timeout for wsman operations: 300 secs.
3506 00003504 121.23886871 [4608] 1200.1610::01/28-18:29:11.427:BitDeploymentSubtask.cs(771): MapSANWMIErrorCodeToCarmineError: Return value from agent CARMINE_SAN_WMI_NO_UNIQUE_LUN_IDENTIFIER, Mapped carmine error code DeployVMNoUniqueID

Variation 2:

00000724 6.41339493 [3268] 0CC4.0378::07/27-03:32:02.851:DifferencingDisksRefresher.cs(630): Virtual disk for VM VMNAME:0041902D-E883-4189-8EFB-B0FE3E050FB1 is on a network path \\servername\share\New Virtual Hard Disk.vhd. We will mark it as unsupported
00000725 6.41355848 [3268] 0CC4.0378::07/27-03:32:02.851:VmRefresher.cs(4832): VM VMNAME has an invalid bus specification or bad path or path that we cannot access and will be marked unsupported
00000726 6.41393661 [3268] 0CC4.0378::07/27-03:32:02.851:VmRefresher.cs(4832): Microsoft.VirtualManager.Utils.CarmineException: The specified path \\servername\share\New Virtual Hard Disk.vhd is not valid on the servername server.
00000727 6.41393661 [3268] Ensure that you have specified a valid path, and then try the operation again.
00000728 6.41393661 [3268] at Microsoft.VirtualManager.Engine.Backup.DifferencingDisksRefresher.GetDifferencingDisksHierarchyFromVMService(WSManConnectionParameters hostConnectionParameters, Boolean allowPartialObjects)
00000729 6.41393661 [3268] at Microsoft.VirtualManager.Engine.Backup.DifferencingDisksRefresher.GenerateDiskHierarchy(WSManConnectionParameters hostConnnectionParameters, Boolean allowPartialObjects, UInt32& errorCode)
00000730 6.41393661 [3268] at Microsoft.VirtualManager.Engine.BitBos.VMRefresherBase.UpdateDisks(IVMComputerSystem vmComputer)
00000731 6.41393661 [3268] *** Carmine error was: HostAgentBadPathname (2906); 0

On the client, you may see a VMM trace with errors like the following :

0639 00000637 28.49589729 [2800] 0AF0.0A00::03/09-21:15:59.638:HostProperties.cs(523): Found Disk: UniqueID:0, Name:\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE4, Capacity:2937995988480
0640 00000638 28.49621391 [2800] 0AF0.0A00::03/09-21:15:59.638:WsmanAPIWrapper.cs(1415): WSMAN: URL: [http://machinename:80] Verb: [INVOKE], method: [GetLUNIDFromFSPath], resource: [http://schemas.microsoft.com/wbem/wsman/1/wmi/root/scvmmaccelerator/VirtualizationSANAccelerator]
0641 00000639 28.49632645 [2800] 0AF0.0A00::03/09-21:15:59.638:WsmanAPIWrapper.cs(544): HostSessionCache: elements for [S-1-5-21-72034930-1147432956-5522801-23474-.]: [100]
0642 00000640 28.49638367 [2800] 0AF0.0A00::03/09-21:15:59.638:WsmanAPIWrapper.cs(593): WsmanAPIWrapper::CreateSession: going to use custom timeout for wsman operations: 300 secs.
0646 00000644 28.64711952 [2800] 0AF0.0A00::03/09-21:15:59.841:BitDeploymentSubtask.cs(771): MapSANWMIErrorCodeToCarmineError: Return value from agent CARMINE_SAN_WMI_NO_UNIQUE_LUN_IDENTIFIER, Mapped carmine error code DeployVMNoUniqueID

280 00000278 22.32052803 [6536] 1988.1658::03/09-21:16:11.349:sanacceleratorminiprovider.cpp(2482): <--CDisk::FindDisk
281 00000279 22.32100105 [6536] 1988.1658::03/09-21:16:11.349:sanacceleratorminiprovider.cpp(1687)[00000000001A98: Disk pnp id \\?\mpio.disk&ven_hp&prod_p2000_g3_sas&rev_t200.1&7f6ac24&0&3630434646303031304537454642414237344431303030.{53f56307-b6bf-11d0-94f2-00a0c91efb8b}
282 00000280 22.32103920 [6536] 1988.1658::03/09-21:16:11.349:sanacceleratorminiprovider.cpp(1689)[00000000001A98: Disk address Port3Path0Target3Lun4
283 00000281 22.32107353 [6536] 1988.1658::03/09-21:16:11.349:sanacceleratorminiprovider.cpp(1691)[00000000001A98: Disk name \\?\PhysicalDrive4
284 00000282 22.32113457 [6536] 1988.1658::03/09-21:16:11.349:sanacceleratorminiprovider.cpp(2263): ==>LunIdentifier::FindLunUniqueID
285 00000283 22.32162285 [6536] 1988.1658::03/09-21:16:11.349:sanacceleratorminiprovider.cpp(2263): <--LunIdentifier::FindLunUniqueID
286 00000284 22.32165909 [6536] 1988.1658::03/09-21:16:11.349:sanacceleratorminiprovider.cpp(1733)[00000000001A98: LUN has no unique storage identifier
287 00000285 22.32180595 [6536] 1988.1658::03/09-21:16:11.349:sanacceleratorminiprovider.cpp(1740)[00000000001A98: GetLUNIDFromFSPath: Caught exception. Returning error code 9

Cause

This behavior is by design. VMM does not support GPT disks on P2V targets. To successfully migrate a machine with a GPT disk, you must first convert the disk to MBR format.

Resolution

To allow conversion of machines with GPT partitions, you must first convert the partition to MBR. There are two workarounds that may be used:

Option 1: Back up data on the physical machine

Back up existing data using your existing backup solution.
Delete any existing partitions on the disk(s)
Right-click on the disk and choose Convert to MBR.
Restore your data using your backup solution
Restart the computer and retry the P2V operation.

Option 2:

Use the Disk2VHD tool from http://live.sysinternals.com/disk2vhd.exe to convert the partition(s) to VHD files.
Create a new VM and attach the VM from step 1 to the VHD.
Boot the operating system from the OS installation media, and use the appropriate repair steps to make the disk bootable:

Windows XP and Windows Server 2003:

KB321626 - "Operating System Not Found" or "Missing operating system" error message when you start your Windows XP-based computer (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;321626)

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008:

KB927392 - How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392/en-us)

More Information

You can verify the partition type on the target machine by inspecting the disk configuration in Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc). See 'P2V: Requirements for Physical Source Computers' at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc917954.aspx for more information. GPT requires an EFI or UEFI BIOS to boot; Hyper-V does not have either EFI or UEFI BIOS support.

=====

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

2705349 - P2V fails with GPT partitions in System Center Virtual Machine Manager

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

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Reporting in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (Part 2 of 3)

J.C. Hornbeck — Mon, 14 May 2012 19:22:19 GMT

Hello everyone. In the Part 1 we looked at reports that System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) ships out of the box for our customers; in this part we want to shift gears a bit and talk about what additional things you can do based on the data we already are pumping into the OM Data Warehouse.

I touched upon the fact that the canned reports that we ship in one sense can be used as templates for your own custom reports; reading between the lines what it really means is that it’s not just the canned reports but the data that we are pushing into the OM Data Warehouse is something you could leverage upon.

How and Why? Well, every business and every group within an organization will often have very specific requirements when it comes to reporting. This means that very likely there are certain reports that you want tailored to the specific questions you want answered for a particular business related question. Having this data that VMM is pushing into the warehouse, you can build exactly that. As an example, lets look at how we can build a custom report that depicts CPU and Memory usage at a cloud level and at a cloud user level.

Operations Manager publishes its Data Warehouse Schema and here is some good content on how to build custom reports. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg508710.

For this example I am going to use Microsoft Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) to create the custom report.

What VMM Data is available in OM DW for custom reports?

VMM Library and Discovery MPs define all the types that are pushed into OM DW. To easily view this type information, you could use a tool like MP Viewer (run it from a machine that has System Center Operations Manager console on it). I have pointed out a few properties that we will be using in this custom report.

Creating a sample DW query for VMM Data

When the VMM-OM connection is established, instance data is being pushed into the OM warehouse and this data is available through the set of views that OM is making available. You should have a basic understanding of Data Warehouse Schema for this query. For our sample report, to report on memory usage say at a cloud level I will have to write a custom SQL query to gather and correlate information from these various views (time to take your SQL developer for a coffee J).

Here is a SQL query I am going to use (query provided as is):

DECLARE @GBFactor REAL

DECLARE @precision INT

DECLARE @daysHistory INT

DECLARE @ReportStartTime DATETIME

DECLARE @ReportEndTime DATETIME

SET @daysHistory = 30 /* This report query looks at a static window of past 30 days*/

SET @precision = 1

SET @GBFactor = 1073741824.0

SET @ReportStartTime = DATEADD(DAY, @daysHistory * -1, GETUTCDATE())

SET @ReportEndTime = GETUTCDATE()

SELECT CloudRelation.CloudName,

ServiceVMRelation.ServiceName,

vME.DisplayName AS VM,

vOwner.PropertyValue AS VMOwner,

ROUND(perfTable.CPUAvg, @precision) AS DailyAvgCPU,

ROUND(perfTable.RAMAvg, @precision) AS DailyAvgMemUsage,

perfTable.CollectionDate

FROM vManagedEntity AS vME

INNER JOIN /* SubQuery 1 - VMs have aggregated daily perf data available in DW Perf Views*/

(

SELECT

ManagedEntityRowId,

AVG(CASE WHEN RName = N'Microsoft.SystemCenter.VirtualMachineManager.2012.VirtualMachine.PercentCPU' THEN Entry.AVG1 END) AS CPUAvg,

AVG(CASE WHEN RName = N'Microsoft.SystemCenter.VirtualMachineManager.2012.VirtualMachine.Memory' THEN Entry.AVG1 END) AS RAMAvg,

CollectionDate

FROM

(

SELECT

vRule.RuleSystemName AS RName,

AVG(perf.vPerfDaily.AverageValue) AS AVG1,

vManagedEntity.ManagedEntityRowId,

CONVERT(DATE, perf.vPerfDaily.DateTime, 1) AS CollectionDate

FROM perf.vPerfDaily,

vPerformanceRuleInstance,

vManagedEntity,

vRule

WHERE vPerformanceRuleInstance.RuleRowId = vRule.RuleRowId

AND vPerformanceRuleInstance.PerformanceRuleInstanceRowId = perf.vPerfDaily.PerformanceRuleInstanceRowId

AND vPerformanceRuleInstance.InstanceName = vManagedEntity.DisplayName

AND ( perf.vPerfDaily.DateTime >= @ReportStartTime )

AND ( perf.vPerfDaily.DateTime <= @ReportEndTime )

AND ( vRule.RuleSystemName IN ( N'Microsoft.SystemCenter.VirtualMachineManager.2012.VirtualMachine.PercentCPU' ,

N'Microsoft.SystemCenter.VirtualMachineManager.2012.VirtualMachine.Memory' ) )

GROUP BY vPerformanceRuleInstance.InstanceName,

vManagedEntity.ManagedEntityRowId,

vRule.RuleSystemName,

perf.vPerfDaily.DateTime

) AS Entry

GROUP BY

ManagedEntityRowId,

CollectionDate

) AS perfTable

ON vME.ManagedEntityRowId = perfTable.ManagedEntityRowId

INNER JOIN /* SubQuery 2 - Fetch "Owner" property of a VM */

(

SELECT

[ManagedEntityRowId],

[PropertyValue],

MAX(ToDateTime) AS LatestDate

FROM

[vManagedEntityPropertySet] AS vMEPS,

vManagedEntityTypeProperty AS vMETP,

vManagedEntityType AS vMET

WHERE

vMEPS.PropertyGuid = vMETP.PropertyGuid

AND vMETP.PropertySystemName = 'Owner'

AND vMET.ManagedEntityTypeSystemName = N'Microsoft.SystemCenter.VirtualMachineManager.2012.VirtualMachine'

AND [PropertyValue] != ''

GROUP BY

[ManagedEntityRowId],

[PropertyValue]) AS vOwner

ON vME.ManagedEntityRowId = vOwner.ManagedEntityRowId

INNER JOIN /* Subquery 3- Fetch clouds for VM using 'PrivateCloudContainsVirtualMachine' relationship */

(

SELECT

CloudVM.TargetManagedEntityRowId,

vManagedEntity.DisplayName AS CloudName

FROM

(

SELECT vRelationship.TargetManagedEntityRowId,

vRelationship.SourceManagedEntityRowId

FROM vRelationship

INNER JOIN

vRelationshipProperty

ON vRelationshipProperty.RelationshipRowId = vRelationship.RelationshipRowId

INNER JOIN

vRelationshipType

ON vRelationshipType.RelationshipTypeRowId = vRelationship.RelationshipTypeRowId

AND vRelationshipProperty.ToDateTime IS NULL

WHERE vRelationshipType.RelationshipTypeSystemName = N'Microsoft.SystemCenter.VirtualMachineManager.PrivateCloudContainsVirtualMachine'

) AS CloudVM

INNER JOIN

vManagedEntity

ON vManagedEntity.ManagedEntityRowId = CloudVM.SourceManagedEntityRowId

) AS CloudRelation

ON vME.ManagedEntityRowId = CloudRelation.TargetManagedEntityRowId

LEFT JOIN /* Subquery 4 - Fetch Service for VM using 2 relationships */

/* LEFT JOIN will return VMs even if they do not belong to any service*/

(

SELECT

vManagedEntity.DisplayName AS ServiceName,

vRelationship.SourceManagedEntityRowId AS ServiceId,

vRelationship.TargetManagedEntityRowId AS TierId,

TierVMRelation.TargetManagedEntityRowId AS VMId

FROM

vRelationship

INNER JOIN vRelationshipType

ON vRelationshipType.RelationshipTypeRowId = vRelationship.RelationshipTypeRowId

INNER JOIN

(

SELECT

vRelationship.TargetManagedEntityRowId,

vRelationship.SourceManagedEntityRowId

FROM

vRelationship

INNER JOIN vRelationshipType

ON vRelationshipType.RelationshipTypeRowId = vRelationship.RelationshipTypeRowId

WHERE vRelationshipType.RelationshipTypeSystemName = N'Microsoft.SystemCenter.VirtualMachineManager.2012.ComputerTierContainsVirtualMachine'

) AS TierVMRelation

ON vRelationship.TargetManagedEntityRowId = TierVMRelation.SourceManagedEntityRowId

INNER JOIN vManagedEntity

ON vManagedEntity.ManagedEntityRowId = vRelationship.SourceManagedEntityRowId

WHERE vRelationshipType.RelationshipTypeSystemName = N'Microsoft.SystemCenter.VirtualMachineManager.2012.ServiceHostsComputerTier'

) AS ServiceVMRelation

ON vME.ManagedEntityRowId = ServiceVMRelation.VMId

ORDER BY

CloudName DESC,

ServiceName DESC,

vME.ManagedEntityRowId,

CollectionDate

____

This sample query gets a property (Owner), related objects (Cloud, Service), and daily average perf data (CPU, Memory usage) for a VM object in a given time window.

It uses a wrapper query that formats the results from following 4 sub queries --

1- Gets Perf Data for VMs

2- Fetches Owner property of VMs

3- Fetches Clouds for VM

4- Fetches Services for VM, if available

Creating a Sample Custom Report

Once you have the query in place you can run it as is to ensure that it is pulling the data you are looking for and tweak it as necessary:

You should also see all the available data fields resulting from your query in the Report Data->Datasets section of the designer. In this case I am using the OperationsManagerDW database residing on my SQL Server as my data source using default Windows authentication.

From here you can drag and drop and format various form elements you need for the report in a straightforward way. Of course in the process you can define what kind of mathematical computation is required on each of those data fields that the query produces, what kind of interactivity with the report elements you need the report to have (like sorting, collapsing) etc. For the memory usage per cloud chart for our example I am going to format my Chart data to use averages for the DailyAvgMemUsage data field and report it by aggregating it per Cloud. Here is how chart data properties would look like for that pane:

I also want to show a tabular view of data supporting my report that can be sorted based on either the daily average memory or CPU usage. So I am going to use a table defined such that the data is being aggregated by VMOwner field and sortable on either the Memory or CPU usage fields.

And that’s about it. Click on the preview tab and my custom report appears! There are multiple ways to deploy the report now onto the OM reporting server and just about the easiest way is to deploy it directly from BIDS (you just need to make sure the OM reporting server URL is configured correctly in your project). Once you do that ahoy! Your custom report shows up in the OM reporting console and is ready for consumption.

Time to party J. Ah.. here is how the actual report we started out creating looks like:

For those of you who are reading the above report keenly.. you would have observed that my memory usage per cloud and per user charts shows up exactly the same – happens to be I have only two users; one in each cloud. Regardless we think it’s a pretty useful custom report to begin with..

Thank you!

Chetan Gangwar | Developer | MSFT
Chaitanya Garikiparthi | Program Manager | MSFT

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Open Beta for Private Cloud MOF Guide - Now Available for Download!

Travis Wright MSFT — Fri, 11 May 2012 03:53:12 GMT

Managing and Operating a Microsoft Private Cloud—How to Apply the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF)

The Microsoft Operations Framework team is working on a new guide: Managing and Operating a Microsoft Private Cloud—How to Apply the Microsoft Operations Framework.

Get the beta here.

This guide leads you through the process of how to manage and operate a Microsoft private cloud using the service management processes of the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF). The guide applies MOF’s IT service management principles to that conceptual architecture and technology stack. It describes how to maximize the potential of MOF’s people, process, and technical capabilities to manage and operate a Microsoft private cloud.

Follow this guidance for a private cloud that is better aligned to meet your business needs. Employ MOF’s service management functions (SMFs) to help align IT and business goals, which can enable you to perform private cloud activities effectively and cost-efficiently.

This guide focuses on the SMFs in the Operate Phase and the Manage Layer of MOF to give IT pros and managers what they need to know about managing and operating a private cloud. Management reviews—internal controls that ensure goals are met to achieve business value—are also included.

Tell us what you think! Download and review the beta guide, then send your feedback to mofpm@microsoft.com by June 11, 2012. We would especially appreciate feedback in the following areas:

· Usefulness – Is the technical depth of this guide sufficient for the topics covered? Will this guide be useful to you on a day-to-day basis? What portions of the guide are the most useful to your organization?

· Usability – Is the structure or flow of this guide effective? Is the information presented in a clear and logical manner? Can you easily find key content?

· Impact – Do you anticipate that this guide will save you time and accelerate deployment of Microsoft products in your organization? Has this guide had a positive influence on your opinion of the Microsoft technologies it addresses?

Benefits for participation:

· You get an early look at the guide.

· You will be listed on the acknowledgments page for providing usable feedback.

We look forward to hearing from you! Your input helps to make each guide as helpful and useful as possible. Thanks in advance for taking the time to review Managing and Operating a Microsoft Private Cloud—How to Apply the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF).

Subscribe to the MOF beta program and we will notify you when new beta guides become available for your review and feedback. These are open beta downloads. If you are not already a member of the MOF Beta Program and would like to join, follow these steps:

1. Go here to join the MOF beta program:

https://connect.microsoft.com/site14/InvitationUse.aspx?ProgramID=1880&InvitationID=MOFN-M6H9-PV3X

If the link does not work for you, copy and paste it into the web browser address bar.

2. Sign in using a valid Windows Live^® ID.

3. Enter your registration information.

4. Continue to the MOF program beta page, scroll down to Microsoft Operations Framework, and click the link to join the MOF beta program.

Please send your comments and feedback to mofpm@microsoft.com.

Want to learn more about other MOF guides?

Visit our MOF page for information on the full series of Microsoft Operations Framework guides.

Check out our other Solution Accelerators:

You can see our full catalog of Solution Accelerators here.

Questions & Feedback:

For Microsoft-internal questions and feedback on the guide, please contact us.

Cloud Service Process Management Pack RTM Now Released!

Travis Wright MSFT — Thu, 10 May 2012 16:57:31 GMT

Enhance private cloud management with new process pack

Microsoft System Center Cloud Services Process Pack now available for download!

The Microsoft Solution Accelerators team is pleased to announce that the System Center Cloud Services Process Pack is now available for download.

Download the System Center Cloud Services Process Pack.

The System Center Cloud Services Process Pack is Microsoft’s Infrastructure as a Service solution built on the System Center platform. With the System Center Cloud Services Process Pack, enterprises can realize the benefits of Infrastructure as a Service while simultaneously leveraging their existing investments in the Service Manager, Orchestrator, Virtual Machine Manager, and Operations Manager platforms.

Corporate datacenters are in transition. The recent shift from physical to virtual environments is now being replaced by an interest in moving to the cloud—specifically both private and public cloud infrastructures. Private cloud management assets are being delivered with System Center 2012 and a key part of this solution is the self-service experience. This experience is now significantly enhanced by the System Center Cloud Services Process Pack.

The benefits offered by System Center Cloud Services Process Pack for the enterprise include:

Deep customization and extension of the cloud services experience; natively supported by the System Center suite of products.
Reduced cost, effort, and time to deploy cloud services to organizations that already leverage the System Center platform.

The benefits offered by System Center Cloud Services Process Pack for consumers of IT within the enterprise include:

Standardized and well-defined processes for requesting and managing cloud services, including the ability to define Projects, Capacity pools, and Virtual Machines.
Natively supported request, approval, and notification to enable businesses to effectively manage their own allocated infrastructure capacity pools.

The System Center Cloud Services Process Pack offers a self-service experience to facilitate private cloud capacity requests from your business unit IT application owners and end users, including the flexibility to request additional capacity as business demands increase.

Download the System Center Cloud Services Process Pack: Download the process pack.

Learn more. Visit our TechNet Library page to learn more.

Tell your peers about Solution Accelerators! Please forward this to anyone who wants to learn more about Microsoft Solution Accelerators.

Already using Solution Accelerators? We’d like to hear about your experiences. Please send comments and suggestions to satfdbk@microsoft.com.

System Center

System Center 2012

Microsoft Private Cloud

Want to learn more about Solution Accelerators?

Visit our Solution Accelerators home page to discover how these tools can help your organization save time and money.

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View our full catalog of Solution Accelerators.

Send us your feedback:

Please send your comments

and feedback to cloudservicesfdbk@microsoft.com

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Update to Update Rollup 1 for System Center 2012

Travis Wright MSFT — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:19:48 GMT

An update to Update Rollup 1 for System Center 2012 has been released. In addition to the previous fixes for Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) and App Controller (AC), the update rollup now includes fixes for Operations Manager (OM).

A few things to note:

1) What we used to call ‘Cumulative Updates’ (CU) are now called ‘Update Rollups’ (UR).

2) We will release Update Rollups for the entire suite not individual components as we have in the past. Not every component will have something to release in each Update Rollup.

3) The UR 1 was originally released a couple of weeks ago. This is an update to the UR that now includes some fixes for SCOM.

You can find out more about what is in Update Rollup 1 and get details on how to download and install it here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2686249

The VMM and App Controller updates are available via Microsoft Update.

Below is a snapshot of the VMM and App Controller updates on Microsoft Update.

Update Rollup 1 for System Center 2012 now available

J.C. Hornbeck — Tue, 08 May 2012 20:47:28 GMT

Update Rollup 1 for System Center 2012 contains a number of fixes for System Center 2012 Operations Manager, App Controller and Virtual Machine Manager, including cross platform fixes and support for Oracle Solaris 11.

I won’t go into all the details here but you can see what’s included as well as get a download link in the following KB article:

KB2686249 - Description of Update Rollup 1 for System Center 2012 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2686249)

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

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KB: Deploying a DAC pack in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager fails if using a named SQL instance

J.C. Hornbeck — Tue, 08 May 2012 18:34:07 GMT

Here’s a new Knowledge Base article we published today. This one talks about an issue where deploying a DAC pack in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager fails if using a named SQL instance.

=====

Symptoms

When deploying a SQL DAC pack (Data Tiered Application) using System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager, if the name of the SQL instance in the DAC pack is blank then the service template will fail with the following error:

Error (22528)
The connection to SQL Server on the virtual machine (VMName) failed for the SQL Server data-tier application (Application Name).
DetailedErrorMessage: Failed to connect to server (local).

Recommended Action
Verify the specified SQL Server connection information for the SQL Server data-tier application.

Cause

When deploying a DAC pack or creating a SQL server using a Service template, the SQL instance must match the instance name specified when you created the generalized VHD (Syspreped). Otherwise the service template will fail with Instance Not Found.

Resolution

Edit the DAC pack to specify the correct instance name or edit the Service template to match the instance name of the original VHD.

=====

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

2679704 - Deploying a DAC pack in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager fails if using a named SQL instance

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

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Reporting in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (Part 1)

J.C. Hornbeck — Thu, 03 May 2012 17:30:32 GMT

We’d like to take a minute to share with you the additions to reporting capabilities and the new reports that are available as part of VMM in System Center 2012 and how to access these reports in your installations.

First, you need to establish the connection to Operations Manager since now in VMM we make our reports available exclusively from within the OpsMgr console. We did this for one big reason; to leverage the rich capabilities of object pickers available in the OpsMgr reporting infrastructure.

Detailed instructions on how to configure the connection between OM and VMM is located here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh881887.aspx .

Once that link is established, you should be able to see all of our reports from within the OpsMgr console. Here is a listing from my installation.

As you can see from the listing above, all of the legacy reports available in VMM 2008 R2 are carried forwards and we have added a handful of new reports with the intent of giving you a good understanding of capacity usage across your datacenter at an aggregate level.

One of the most useful ones (my favorite one) among this set of new reports is the Capacity Utilization report which let you pick a set of host machines in your environment and gives you a birds-eye view of how all the hosts are doing from a capacity usage perspective. It covers CPU utilization (considering not just the first moments or averages of usage but also takes second moments into consideration; which means it accounts for bursty-ness in CPU usage as well), Network and Storage usage, Memory usage and Disk IO all in one report to give a holistic view of the entire datacenter if you choose to do so.

Here is a snapshot of the Performance Impact and Resource Utilization report run on about 10 host machines:

Like I said earlier, now you can pick objects even in legacy reports since we rewrote them to use the new controls. No more typing host names or keeping them in a notepad and updating that list.

Here is a run of host group resource usage forecasting report that you can use to forecast and help you in planning for provisioning resources for your physical infrastructure before the resource pool runs super hot. A similar report also exists for forecasting SAN storage usage that works off of SAN Pools that are being managed by VMM. Both of these forecasting reports use SQL Analysis Services forecasting functions to project data into the future and hence require integration with SQL AS.

And here is an example of Power Savings report showcasing the savings obtained due to Power Optimization feature of Virtual Machine Manager. The way it basically works is we capture the Power On/Off events from VMM to the host machines and log them in the warehouse, and then they are used when generating this report.

Last but not least, is our new allocation based Chargeback report. We built this one more as a template showcasing the types of chargeback you can provide your customers by using this report as a canned example you could use as a baseline. It will let you assign a cost per unit of resource allocated to the VM as well as a base cost per

Chaitanya Garikiparthi | Program Manager

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New Top Solutions feeds for System Center products

J.C. Hornbeck — Wed, 02 May 2012 18:53:45 GMT

We are very happy to announce that seven of the Product Solution Centers on http://support.microsoft.com are featuring new Top Solutions sections that pull dynamically from the Top Solutions RSS feeds. The Top Solutions are usually listed on the page for the Key Resources tab.

The following solution centers have dynamic Top Solutions; the rest will be updated in the near future. Check out the new look and functionality!

Windows Server 2008 R2
SQL Server
System Center 2012 – select the tabs for the following products
- Configuration Manager
- Data Protection Manager
- Operations Manager
- Virtual Machine Manager
Lync Server

If you want to keep up to date on all the latest top solutions you’ll definitely want to check these out.

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

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KB: "Install cluster" job fails with Error 25310 when using the Japanese version of System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager

J.C. Hornbeck — Wed, 02 May 2012 16:47:02 GMT

Here’s a new Knowledge Base article we published this morning. This one talks about an issue you can run into when setting up a cluster using the Japanese version of Virtual Machine Manager.

=====

Symptoms

When using the Japanese version of System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), the Install Cluster job fails with the following error:

Error (25310)
Unable to connect to the user host process
Recommended Action
Retry the operation.

Cause

This is a known issue in the Japanese version of VMM.

Resolution

There are two work arounds for this issue:

1. Use the Failover Cluster Manager console to create the cluster.

2. Use the English version of VMM to create the cluster.

=====

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

2685730 : "Install cluster" job fails with Error 25310 when using the Japanese version of System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager

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

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Simplicity is Key to Private Cloud from Microsoft

J.C. Hornbeck — Tue, 01 May 2012 15:38:30 GMT

Here’s something I thought you might find interesting. This is from http://community.brocade.com/community/brocadeblogs/data_center/blog/2012/04/25/simplicity-is-key-to-private-cloud-from-microsoft, written by Sue Hartford, Microsoft Global Alliance Manager at Brocade:

Simplicity was a key message in Brad Anderson’s keynote at the Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas this month. And he’s right on target. Because let’s face it … if the cost and complexity of deploying private cloud are too high, they erase many of the cost benefits of cloud computing.

System Center 2012 delivers on that goal with many improvements to simplify IT’s efforts in building a private cloud, from its simplified licensing (now only two SKU’s which both feature all System Center modules) to simplified deployment of all the technology required to build a private cloud. One example of this is the new System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) load balancer provider that allows IT admins to more easily deploy and provision network and load balancing services from within VMM.

Brocade presents the new ADX load balancer provider to provide integration between the ServerIron ADX series of application delivery switches and VMM. With this integrated solution, IT admins can use VMM to provision both application and network resources from within the VMM console. For example, IT can efficiently manage application resources, automatically provision service requests, and offer the highest application performance and service levels for users in a cost-efficient manner. The result is an agile, elastic application delivery solution for cloud-optimized environments.

Read more about it in the article by Jason Bovberg in Windows IT Pro: http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/system-center/mms-2012-brocades-adx-load-balancer-provider-offers-toptier-performance-142877 or visit www.brocade.com/systemcenter.

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

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KB: Changing the owner of a VM in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager causes the console to become unresponsive

J.C. Hornbeck — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 19:17:52 GMT

Here’s a new Knowledge Base article we published this morning. This one talks about an issue you can run into if your AD groups have circular references.

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Symptoms

After changing the Self-Service Owner of a Virtual Machine (VM) to an AD Security Group in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager, the console becomes unresponsive and after a few minutes displays the following:

Attempting to reconnect

Another dialog maybe also be shown with the following:

An unknown error occurred while executing the PowerShell script:

The connection to the VMM management server <VMM Server> was lost. Ensure that the <VMM Server> is online and that you can access the server remotely from your computer. Then connect to the <VMM Server> and try the command again using the new connection. Or, you can ensure that the Virtual Machine Manager service is started on <VMM Server>. Then connect to<VMM Server> and try the command again using the new connection. If the command fails again because of a connection failure, restart the Virtual Manager service and then try the operation again.

Try the operation again. If the issue persists contact Microsoft Help and Support

ID: 27235

The Event logs will contain the following:

Log Name: System
Source: Service Control Manager
Event ID: 7031
Level: Error
Description: The System Center Virtual Machine Manager service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this <#> times(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 100 milliseconds: Restart the service.

Log Name: Application
Source: Application Error
Event ID: 1000
Level: Error
Description:
Faulting application name: vmmservice.exe, version: 3.0.####.0, time stamp: 0x4e92b38a
Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 6.1.7601.17651, time stamp: 0x4e21213c
Exception code: 0xe053534f
Fault offset: 0x000000000000cacd
Faulting process id: 0x%9
Faulting application start time: 0x%10
Faulting application path: %11
Faulting module path: %12
Report Id: %13

Cause

This can occur if the AD security group's membership is such that it is part of a circular membership. In the following example, adding any of the AD groups would result in the failure because Group_Users is a member of Group_VMMSSU and contains references to Group_VMMSSU:

Group_VMMSSU
> Group_Users
> > Group_VMMSSU

> Group_Admins
> > Group_2

It is this circular membership that results in the vmmservice encountering a StackOverflowException [Exception code: 0xe053534f] and terminating unexpectedly.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, review the AD group membership for any circular references and remove them. If the circular reference is not obvious, the script below can list the nested members of a particular group.

NOTE Use Active Directory Users and Computers to determine the top most group of the group causing issues.

dsquery group -name "Group_VMMSSU" | dsget group -members -expand

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

2680843 : Changing the owner of a VM in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager causes the console to become unresponsive

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

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Using System Center 2012–Virtual Machine Manager Configuration Analyzer (VMMCA) to resolve common issues

CarmSu — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 23:43:53 GMT

Right before the Microsoft Management Summit 2012 I was preparing my demo environment for a session. During the preparation I encountered some problems on one of the demo hosts. The troubled host was in a “Needs Attention” status , but the host status properties appeared Green. So, I got out the VMMCA to see if the tool could detect any issues that were easy to resolve.

I Installed the MBCA 2.0 engine, then installed the VMMCA model. I loaded the model and entered the host name and VMMCA reported 3 issues.

The first issue reported informed me to set the execution policy to enable VMMCA to scan a remote machine. I enabled the remote execution and then rescanned. The next issue found was that ICMP echo was not enabled on my host. The VMMCA gave me the exact command line to run. I ran this on my host and immediately my host went into a “Ok” status. Once in “Ok” status the refresher completed successfully. Below is the output of rule checks that completed successfully once I made the change.

The third issue discovered was a list of patches required for System Center 2012 – VMM to run optimally. The list of hot fixes come directly as a result of cases solved by Microsoft Support to enable customer to help themselves using the benefit of actual solved cases with the list of fixes.

Since I use the new Update Management feature in VMM to update my fabric hosts I created a Baseline that included all updates for hosts and VMM infrastructure servers.

I added the following updates that were available from MU into my baseline. This included the VMM 2012 updates, plus the one update available from MU for the host. As time goes on I will add more updates to this baseline to ensure my environment is kept updated for optimal performance and operation.

I scanned the host and the compliance status came back with a number of critical, security, and VMMCA required hotfixes found in VMMCA. I remediated the VMM Fabric Updates and the Critical Updates on the host. Now my environment is running optimally and that was ensure by the best practice tool analyzer.

A special note: Some of the fixes recommended by the BPA are not available on Windows Update and are in a format where they can not be injected into WSUS. For those fixes manual remediation on the host is required. I thought this was worth mentioning as some you will notice that if you utilize this solution.

In summary, the next time you have an issue with System Center 2012- Virtual Machine Manager utilize the VMMCA as your first line of troubleshooting.

Enjoy,

Carmen M. Summers, System Center Program Manager

KB: A P2V in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager fails with "No compatible drivers were identified"

J.C. Hornbeck — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 18:31:01 GMT

Here’s a new Knowledge Base article we published today. This one shows you how to quickly fix an issue where a P2V in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager fails when using NIC teaming.

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Symptoms

When using System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) to perform an offline P2V (Physical to Virtual migration) of Windows Server 2003 machines configured with HP network teaming, the process only identifies the network adapter configured with an address which is the “HP Network Teaming Virtual Miniport Driver”.
The P2V wizard also displays the following error message:

Error (13246):
No compatible drivers were identified for the device: HP Network Teaming Virtual Miniport Driver. The offline physical-to-virtual conversion requires a driver for this device.

Device Type: network adapter
Device Description: HP Network Teaming Virtual Miniport Driver
Device Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard Company
Hardware IDs (listed in order of preference):cq_cpqteammp
Compatible IDs (listed in order of preference):None

Recommended Action:
Create a new folder under C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2012\Virtual Machine Manager\Driver Import on the Virtual Machine Manager management server and then copy the necessary 32-bit Windows Vista driver package files for this device to the new folder. The driver package files include the driver (.sys) and installation (.inf and .cat) files. Check the device manufacturer's website for the necessary drivers.

The offline P2V migration fails as there is no driver available for the physical network adapter, which in this case is the “HP NC373i Multifunction Gigabit Server Adapter”.

Cause

During an offline P2V, the wizards scans for whether the drivers used for the WinPE boot are already available to the winpe.wim. For systems running Windows Server 2003 and configured with the HP network teaming software “Network Configuration Utility” (NCU), the requirement scan only reports the active network adapter (e.g. HP Network Teaming Virtual Miniport Driver) instead of the physical network adapter (e.g. HP NC373i Multifunction Gigabit Server Adapter).

Resolution

The problem can be solved by injecting the required drivers for the physical network adapter manually into the WinPE image on the VMM management server using DISM. The following PowerShell script does this automatically: Only the source WinPE image, a temporary directory and the missing driver have to be specified. Provide the 32-Bit Windows Vista driver package files to patch the WinPE image.
Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to patch the WinPE image. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the image incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you create and keep a backup of the original image before proceeding with the script.

#Original WinPE image (‘amd64’ or ‘x86’)
$WinPE = ‘C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools\amd64\winpe.wim’
#Temporary directory
$TempPath = ‘C:\Temp\WinPE\’
#Driver for physical network adapter
$DriverPath = ‘C:\Temp\WinPE\NC373i\bxvbd.inf’

copy $WinPE $TempPath
$WinPEimage = $TempPath + ‘winpe.wim’
$WinPEimageTemp = $WinPEimage + ‘.tmp’
$MountDir = ‘C:\Temp\WinPE\Mount’

mkdir $MountDir
copy $WinPEimage $WinPEimageTemp
dism /mount-wim /wimfile:$WinPEimageTemp /index:1 /mountdir:$MountDir
dism /image:$MountDir /add-driver /driver:$DriverPath
dism /unmount-wim /mountdir:$MountDir /commit
copy $WinPEimageTemp $WinPE
del $WinPEimageTemp

The warning / error will still show up in the wizard, but WinPE will now be able to contact the VMM management server after the reboot and complete the P2V migration.
As a VMM P2V always uses a local temporary copy of the WinPE image, make sure to keep a backup of the original image and revert back to the original after finished the P2V migration.

More Information

On source servers running Windows Server 2008 and newer, the requirement scan reports the correct network adapter and no manual workaround is required.

For more information about how to use DISM, see the following: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766067(v=ws.10).aspx

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

2685483 : A P2V in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager fails with "No compatible drivers were identified"

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

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New Knowledge Base articles for System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager

J.C. Hornbeck — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:31:08 GMT

Now that System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager has released, we have some KB articles that describe a few of the things we saw during the beta that you may run into. Nothing really major, just some tips and FYIs you may want to be aware of. If you have plans on rolling out VMM, or even if you already have, you might want to take a quick look at these just in case you happen to run across them somewhere down the road.

2686620	The System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager service crashes when refreshing a Brocade Load Balancer VIP
2679658	Error 444 when adding a System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager highly available cluster
2679668	Adding a Citrix Xen server to System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager fails with error 2901
2679673	The IP Address page in the System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager cluster creation wizard is missing
2679682	Error 2910 re-adding a library server to System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager
2679685	Adding a library that contains reserved characters to System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager causes the console to crash
2679723	The System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager console crashes after enabling Operations Manager integration
2680242	Deploying a service template in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager using a Windows Core VHD fails
2680262	Creating a cluster in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager fails with error 25310
2680267	System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager selects a tagged VLAN when creating a new virtual machine
2686595	Adding a cluster in an untrusted domain to System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager fails with error ID: 404
2693650	Adding Windows 2008 SP2 Server Core as a managed host in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager fails
2693675	Unable to enable MAC spoofing when creating a Virtual Machine template in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager
2688888	Creating a System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager template for a Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 system fails with error 678
2689989	Attaching an ISO file in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager fails with error 12700
2690619	Virtual machine configured to use an ISO has a status of Unsupported VM Configuration in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager
2690697	Refreshing a library share in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager fails with error 2902
2679531	Creating a cluster with System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager fails with error 25310
2690553	Adding a custom property with an apostrophe in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager causes the console to crash
2690609	The System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager Create Virtual Machine Wizard fails if the cloud contains special characters
2695838	Error 2409 in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager when selecting a storage location on a cluster
2685247	Unable to perform a P2V to CSV on System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager if there is insufficient disk space on the local drive
2685654	Cross-domain System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager installation fails with hex code 0x80072030
2685689	Restarting a failed "Refresh Performance Data" job in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager may crash the SCVMM service
2685676	Setup for System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager crashes when the server name exceeds 15 characters

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

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KB: Adding a cluster to System Center Virtual Machine Manager fails with error 2912 (Unknown error (0x800007d0))

J.C. Hornbeck — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 19:24:07 GMT

Here’s one more Knowledge Base article we published this morning. This one shows you how to easily fix an issue where the Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 (OpsMgr) Connector for HP OpenView fails to auto-forwarding alerts to an HP OVO server.

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Symptoms

Consider the following scenario:

1. You are using System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (VMM) to manage a cluster resource.
2. One node of the cluster displays a status of Needs Attention.
3. Viewing the properties of the node displays a connection status of Not Responding on the status tab.
4. Remove and attempting to re-add the cluster back again fails with the following error:

Error (2912)
An internal error has occurred trying to contact an agent on the node1.xxx server.
(Unknown error (0x800007d0))

Recommended Action
Ensure the agent is installed and running. Ensure the WS-Management service is installed and running, then restart the agent.

5. The other nodes can be added successfully, but when the cluster refreshes you receive the following message:

Warning (13926)

Host cluster <name> 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.

Recommended Action

Ensure that all the nodes are online and do not have Not Responding status in Virtual Machine Manager. Then refresh the host cluster again.

Cause

This can occur if the Performance Counters on the node are corrupt.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, complete the steps below:

1. Test using the following commands in an elevated command prompt (run a CMD prompt as Administrator):

winrm e wmi/root/cimv2/Win32_PerfRawData_Tcpi

Examine the result:

p_NetworkInterface
WSManFault
Message
ProviderFault
WSManFault
Message = HRESULT = 0x800007D0

Error number: -2147023537 0x8007054F
An internal error occurred.

wmic path Win32_PerfRawData_Tcpip_NetworkInterface get *

Examine the result:

ERROR:
Description =

2. 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 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2554336)

3. Remove the partially added cluster and re-add the same cluster once again.

At this point all nodes should be added successfully.

More Information

For more information see the following Knowledge Base article:

976640 - How to troubleshoot the "Not Responding" host status in SCVMM 2008 and in SCVMM 2008 R2 (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;976640)

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

2686573 : Adding a cluster to System Center Virtual Machine Manager fails with error 2912 (Unknown error (0x800007d0))

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

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Troubleshooting service templates in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager

J.C. Hornbeck — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 17:01:15 GMT

Hi 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Sample entry of a VMMapplicationmanager.log:

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.

Alvin Morales | Senior Support Escalation Engineer

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