I came across the following error whilst trying to install Veeam Backup & Replication 11.0.0.837 on Windows Server 2022:
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Setup Failed. Installation was interrupted before application could be installed. You need to restart the installer to try again… |
Installation logs are saved under:
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C:\ProgramData\Veeam\Setup\Temp |
in BackupSuite_DD_MM_YYY_HH_MM_SS.txt format but they do not necessarily give away the reason for the setup failure:
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This is a quick post showing how you can sync your domain controllers with an external time source like time.windows.com or ntp.pool.org. By default, all machines in the domain will sync time from the domain controller which is the internal time server. If you have more than one DC then time will sync from the DC that holds the PDC emulator FSMO role. To check which DC is the PDC emulator in your domain you need to run:
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Get-ADDomain | select PDCEmulator |
command in PowerShell like so:
Once the PDC emulator role is established there are a few commands we need to run in order for time to sync. These are (run on the PDC emulator in PowerShell):
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For absolute ages now we have been crying out loud to have some sort of serial access to Azure VM’s. Now, this request has been fulfilled and the Special Administrative Console (SAC) is available in preview for Windows and Linux guests! Windows images on Azure do not have Special Administrative Console (SAC) enabled by default (see below). SAC is supported on server versions of Windows but is not available on client versions like Windows 10, Windows 8 or Windows 7 etc.
To enable Serial console for Windows Virtual Machines please use the following steps:
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bcdedit /ems {current} on bcdedit /emssettings EMSPORT:1 EMSBAUDRATE:115200 |
To access the SAC head over to Serial console (Preview) item on Azure Portal and get greeted with the following:
How very awesome! 🙂
If you’re about to upload Hyper-V or VMware vSphere virtual machine(s) to Microsoft Azure you need to properly configure the connection in Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter.
Subscription ID (which everyone should hopefully know), as well as Certificate Thumbprint are required to make this happen. Subscription ID can be retrieved either via the management portal or Get-AzureSubscription commandlet but Certificate Thumbprint is not so easy.
Here is the MVMC screen I’m on about:
If you have connected to your Azure subscription in the past using Powershell, chances are you already have the certificate that’s required. In my case, I like to keep things separated so thought it would be best to generate a new cert and use that cert specifically for MVMC related tasks.
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Recently I have been re-installing my home lab due to the 60 day trial license coming to an end and discovered something odd. During the installation of vCenter 5.5 on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 I came across the following error:
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Unable to contact Lookup Service. Check vm_ssoreg.log in the system temporary folder for more details. Search the VMware Knowledge Base (http://kb.vmware.com) for "Error 29102" for more information. |
The solution was rather simple but not straight forward to work out initially. My internal network ID for VMware hosts is 10.10.0.0/24 but what I was missing is the corresponding rDNS zone in my DNS (reverse). The minute I have created 0.10.10.in-addr-arpa the error went away. What makes this even stranger is the fact I have to redo my lab every 60 days and this is the first time this error has come up!
Don’t we all just love to see everything in green/healthy/hunky dory state when it comes to service availability? I know I am definitely one of those that do (OCD and all that..)
If you’re running VMware vCenter 5.5 Update 2 you might find, upon checking, that VMware vCenter Storage Monitoring Service has an alert with a message stating that Service Initialization Failed:
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VMware vCenter 5.5 Update 2 Service Health displays Storage Monitoring Service “service_initialization_failed” |
I have been using the free version of Veeam Endpoint Backup (VEB) product since it was first released and it works wonders. Really good software that just keeps getting better and better. You can not only backup desktop and laptops but also VMware virtual machines with PCI pass-through devices which Veeam Backup & Replication 9 cannot properly backup since snapshots are not allowed when PCI-e devices are in use. Another good use case for VEB is the ability to backup Hyper-V hosts themselves. I have a large number of Hyper-V boxes dotted around and although I use Veeam Backup & Replication to back up the virtual machines I still need some sort of backup for the hosts. VEB fills this gap perfectly and in the unlikely event of a disaster, I would use VEB to restore the host (C drive i.e. the OS) and Veeam B&R to get my virtual machines back (D drive where the VMs sit). This setup works really well and I already had to use it once!
One thing however that didn’t quite make to the GUI yet is the slightly annoying fact when you point the backups to SMB share and change the hostname of the source machine the backup name doesn’t reflect the new hostname within the share. In my example my Core i3 test bench used to be called DESKTOP-9H9LL2J but now I have changed its name to SPN-TESTB-01 to comply with my standard naming convention. In an ideal world, the backup folder should also change its name but that’s not the case. Here are some examples, hostname has been clearly changed to DESKTOP-9H9LL2J:
More SSLv3 (Poodle vulnerability) woes as this time NetApp VSC 5.0 is broken!
So my vCenter 5.5 update 2a got updated to update 3e without much of a problem but SRM and VSC are busted now. Great. Virtual Storage Console sort of works but the backup jobs tab hasn’t got any entries and you cannot re-create them due to the following errors:
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Unable to connect to Virtual Storage Console server. Please make sure that the Virtual Storage Console server is running. |
To cut this long story short – if you have vCenter Server 5.5 update 2 you will have issues if you patch your hosts to the latest available patch level for ESXi. VMware disabled SSLv3 (POODLE and all that..) in update 3b for ESXi meaning if your vCenter Server is running update 2 you won’t be able to connect until the vCenter is patched to update 3b as well. Running ESXi hosts on update 3b and having vCenter Server on update 2 is normally a perfectly valid configuration but because SSLv3 got disabled as part of this process the connectivity is broken.
Example error messages in vpxd log file when patched host in being added to vCenter Server include:
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2016-02-26T15:47:12.729Z [07448 error 'HttpConnectionPool-000001'] [ConnectComplete] Connect failed to <cs p:0000000017ddfdf0, TCP:spn-esx-04.alex.com:443>; cnx: (null), error: class Vmacore::Ssl::SSLException(SSL Exception: error:140000DB:SSL routines:SSL routines:short read) 2016-02-26T15:47:12.729Z [07400 error 'httphttpUtil' opID=30D532A7-00000053-90] [HttpUtil::ExecuteRequest] Error in sending request - SSL Exception: error:140000DB:SSL routines:SSL routines:short read 2016-02-26T15:47:12.730Z [07400 error 'vpxdvpxdHostAccess' opID=30D532A7-00000053-90] [VpxdHostAccess::Connect] Failed to discover version: vim.fault.HttpFault |
Pretty silly thing to do really – I have left the default site name when installing SRM 5.8 so it has FQDN of my vCenter box instead of a proper name:
From vSphere Web Client point of view having FQDN in there is not ideal as well as introducing confusion which site is which (live vs. recovery):
To get the site name changed we need to edit vmware-dr.xml which lives (by default) in the following location: