SCVMM 2008 R2 Installation defaults and Self Service Portal

SCVMM is an excellent product for managing your Hyper-V environment. The Self Service Portal (SSP), a component of the SCVMM install, allows end users to manage and deploy VM’s remotely. However, but sure to read the fine print when installing.

During the installation process, you will be prompted to select what ports the VMM Agent will use when communicating with the Hyper-V host. The default ports WinRM and BITS use are 80 and 443 respectively. If you plan on running the Self Service Portal from the same host system, you will either need to change the ports the VMM Agent uses or change the ports the Self Service Portal uses.

Since browsers and IIS always default to 80 and 443 for HTTP and HTTPS, I would recommend making the change to the VMM Agent. Port 8080 for the VMM Agent control port (WinRM) and 8443 for the VMM Agent data port (BITS) are nice alternatives. Note that using a different IP for the SSP is NOT an option, as WinRM and BITS will self-configure to listen on all IP addresses thereby hijacking the ports.

A quick note, changing the default ports is recommended if you are planning on running ANY website on the same box. For instance, we had initially installed SCVMM on the same box running Operations Manager. It wasn’t until our VM migrations began failing that we realized the default installation of SCVMM was being interfered with the Operations Manager Console which was also running on the same system.

Lastly, you may not even receive an error of any type when having this issue – rather, the SSP simply won’t install. You may see behavior similar to this:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/virtualmachinemanager/thread/bba52f08-7b95-4a74-9c9b-ceaf0499e29c/#1dbef478-f896-48e4-af4e-b455d120c10b

Error 0x800423f3 backing up Hyper-V VM with DPM 2007

One error you may receive while backing up a Hyper-V VM with DPM 2007 is the generic “DPM encountered a retryable VSS error. (ID 30112 Details: Unknown error (0x800423f3) (0x800423F3)).” There are a couple of different things that could cause this error. The two most common are:

1. You are running a Windows Server 2008 SP1 Hyper-V host and do not have the appropriate pre-requisites installed. Specifically, the hotfix described in KB959962.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd347840.aspx

2. There is a VSS error of some kind inside the VM causing the Hyper-V VSS writer to fail.

One of the most common VSS errors inside a Server 2008 VM I have seen, is event id 8193:

Log Name:      Application
Source:        VSS
Date:          <DateTime>
Event ID:      8193
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      <ComputerName>
Description:
Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error calling routine ConvertStringSidToSid.  hr = 0x80070539.

Operation:
OnIdentify event
Gathering Writer Data
Context:
Execution Context: Shadow Copy Optimization Writer
Writer Class Id: {4dc3bdd4-ab48-4d07-adb0-3bee2926fd7f}
Writer Name: Shadow Copy Optimization Writer
Writer Instance ID: {3586f039-f2f9-4dcb-a46e-3aaa20f1a2fa}
This error can be solved by following the instructions in this blog post. Specifically, perform these steps outline in KB947242:
  • Delete unresolvable SIDs in the ‘Administrators’ group on the VM.
  • Open regedit and locate ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList’
  • Under the ProfileList subkey, delete any subkey that is named SID.bak

This has resolved the issue in most cases where I have seen that DPM error occur. Some other suggested troubleshooting tips that have solved this problem for me in the past:

  • Re-install the Integration Components and reboot the VM
  • Resolve issues for any VSS writers not listed as stable from the “vssadmin list writers” command on the host or inside the VM. You can restart the following services to resolve some problems
    • System Writer – Cryptographic Services service (doesn’t affect the system)
    • IIS Metabse Writer – IIS Administrative service (will reset all of IIS)
    • SqlServerWriter – SQL VSS service (doesn’t affect SQL)
    • WMI Writer – Windows Management Instrumentation service (WMI will be unavailable during the
      service restart)
    • BITS Writer – BITS service (BITS will be unavailable during the service restart)
  • Re-register VSS components as described in KB940032
  • Ensure there is sufficient space inside the VM for shadow copies