VMware VCM 5.3 User manual

VMware vCenter Configuration

ManagerTroubleshooting Guide

VCM 5.3

This document supports the version of each product listed and supports all

subsequent versions until the document is replaced by a new edition. To

check for more recent editions of this document, see

http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs.

EN-000476-00

http://www.vmware.com/support/

The VMware Web site also provides the latest product updates.

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docfeedback@vmware.com

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other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

VMware, Inc.

3401 Hillview Ave.

Palo Alto, CA 94304

www.vmware.com

VCM Troubleshooting Guide

2 VMware, Inc.

Contents

About This Book 5

General Troubleshooting Guidelines 7

Verify the Behavior is Negative 7

Isolate the Behavior 8

Identify External Factors 9

Check the Debug Log 10

Info Messages 11

Warning Messages 11

Error Messages 12

Exception Messages 12

Gather Information for VMware Customer Support 12

Types of Problems 13

User Interface 13

Security / Authentication 14

SQL Server 14

VCM Agent 15

UNIX Agent 15

Report Server 15

Internet Information Services (IIS) 16

Network Connectivity 17

Hardware and Performance Issues 17

How to Gather Diagnostic Files 19

Screenshots 19

Debug Logs 19

SQL Server Logs 20

IIS Logs 21

ARS Files 21

Syslog File (UNIX) 22

IE Tool Logs 22

Event Logs 22

System Information (msinfo32.exe) 23

ETL Logs (UNIX) 23

VCM Installation Logs 23

Patching Debug Information 23

Software Provisioning Troubleshooting 25

Troubleshooting Software Provisioning Repositories 25

When requesting a package from a repository, the package (.crate file) cannot be found 26

Repository.index is no longer valid 27

Crates.gz file is corrupt 27

Too many users adding new platforms and sections 27

Repository not found when reindexing or publishing packages to a repository 28

Troubleshooting Package Studio 28

Error when starting Package Studio: “Cannot create instance of ‘RepositoryEditorViewModel’

defined in assembly ‘PackageStudio…” 28

The Generate button is grayed out 29

VMware, Inc. 3

VCM Troubleshooting Guide

Error when adding a Provides: the dependency package name is invalid 30

When a package is created, signed, saved as project, and then generated, the package is no

longer signed 31

The installed size of the application is set to nnn, but systems with nnn run out of space during

installation 31

The package installs the application but does not uninstall 31

Files are added to the Project Data Directory, but they are not displayed in the list 31

I am uncertain if the package requires a reboot to install or I only want the installation to

reboot sometimes 32

Gathering Software Provisioning Logs on the Collector 32

Gathering Software Provisioning Logs on the Agent 32

Windows Agent Installation 35

Pre-Install Environment 35

Network 35

Collector 35

Manual Agent Install 44

Protocol Specific 45

UNIX Agent Troubleshooting 47

Agent Directory Structure 47

Collector Certificates 56

Patch Assessment 57

Directories Created During an Inspection 58

Saving Executed Scripts and Results 59

UNIX Agent Error Scenarios 60

If the installation reports and error 60

The Collector cannot ping the Agent 60

Agent fails to return data 61

Monitoring network traffic 63

The Collector reports the job succeeded, but there is still no data 66

Index 67

4 VMware, Inc.

About This Book

About This Book This manual, Troubleshooting Guide for VMware vCenter Configuration Manager, explains the types of

problems that may occur with VMware vCenter Configuration Manager, the diagnostic material VMware

Customer Supportwill need to analyze the problem, and the steps to retrieve that information.

Intended Audience

The information presented in this manual is written for system administrators who are experienced

Windows or UNIX/Linux/Mac OS X system administrators and who are familiar with managing network

users and resources, and performing system maintenance.

To use the information in this guide effectively, you must have a basic understanding of how to configure

network resources, install software, and administer operating systems. You also need to fully understand

your network’s topology and resource naming conventions.

Document Feedback

VMware welcomes your suggestions for improving our documentation. If you have comments, send

your feedback to docfeedback@vmware.com.

VMware VCM Documentation

The vCenter Configuration Manager (VCM) documentation consists of the VCM documentation set.

Technical Support and Education Resources

The following technical support resources are available to you. To access the current version of this book

and other books, go to http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs.

Online and Telephone

Support

To use online support to submit technical support requests, view your product

and contract information, and register your products, go to

http://www.vmware.com/support.

Customers with appropriate support contracts should use telephone support for

priority 1 issues. Go to http://www.vmware.com/support/phone_support.html.

Support Offerings To find out how VMware support offerings can help meet your business needs,

go to http://www.vmware.com/support/services.

VMware, Inc. 5

VMware Professional

Services

VMware Education Services courses offer extensive hands-on labs, case study

examples, and course materials designed to be used as on-the-job reference tools.

Courses are available onsite, in the classroom, and live online. For onsite pilot

programs and implementation best practices, VMware Consulting Services

provides offerings to help you assess, plan, build, and manage your virtual

environment. To access information about education classes, certification

programs, and consulting services, go to http://www.vmware.com/services.

VCM Troubleshooting Guide

6 VMware, Inc.

General Troubleshooting Guidelines 1

General Troubleshooting Guidelines This document attempts to describe some of the basic steps you can take before contacting VMware

Customer Support.Below is a simple flowchart that provides troubleshooting procedures, allowing you to

resolve simple issues on your own. Then, if necessary, you can contact VMware Customer Support for

additional support.

Verify the Behavior is Negative

There are a few messages that appear in VCM and VCM Patching that may be interpreted as errors, when

in fact they are merely warnings. Other behaviors may be operating exactly as defined, but since the result

is not what is expected, it could be interpreted as wrong behavior.

For example, when creating a Compliance rule, it is important to realize that the conditional statements

must be set up to highlight systems that fail to meet the described normal condition as non-compliant.

The VCM User Interface highlights this fact in the Compliance rule creation wizard on the condition

definition page displayed below:

VMware, Inc. 7

This construction may be confusing. A user might intuitively create a conditional statement that describes

the abnormal condition they want to eliminate. As a result, they find that VCM returns a list of nearly all

their machines and flags them as non-compliant with the abnormal rule. In reality, nearly all these systems

might be compliant and VCM has merely performed exactly as requested.

The first step to troubleshooting VCM, therefore, is to first verify that the suspect behavior is a negative

behavior or one that is not within the normal operating parameters of VCM. The VCM Help file is the

perfect tool to use when trying to determine normal behavior. There is a Help button on almost every

screen of each VCM wizard as well as in the upper-right corner of the Portal. The Help buttons, on the

Portal or in a wizard, display context-sensitive help topics relevant to the area of VCM in which you are

currently working.

Validate that the message or behavior seen is not described in the online Help before assuming the

behavior is negative or undesirable.

Isolate the Behavior

The next step to take when troubleshooting an undesired behavior is to try to isolate it. This is done by

eliminating, one by one, all factors that may be contributing to the behavior until the bare minimum

number of factors are in play when the error occurs.

For example, if you encounter some problem on a single machine during a collection for 50 machines and

10 data types per machine, the first step would be to eliminate the 49 machines that did not exhibit the

same behavior, and run a collection for the same 10 data types against the single problem machine. You

can usually isolate which machine failed by viewing the details of the job in the Job History screen on the

Administration slider. If you witness the same behavior, you then eliminate data types (one or two at a

time) until you find the data type that is causing the behavior. Again, the job details on the Job History

screen (as seen below) may give you some indication as to which data types failed.

VCM Troubleshooting Guide

8 VMware, Inc.

The goal for this trial-and-error elimination process is to understand when the undesired behavior occurs

so you can reproduce the behavior consistently and at will. Once you know exactly how to reproduce the

error at any time, be sure to document those steps for future investigation.

Identify External Factors

Sometimes the behavior is seemingly unpredictable and the above method will not succeed in isolating it.

For these types of issues, it is best to take special note of the status of the environment when the behavior

appears. Due to the amount of data processed by VCM, the systems running the database and the main

application are subject to periods of high resource consumption.

System load can be a good troubleshooting indicator when problems arise. When investigating an

undesired behavior, take note of the system load, memory usage, network traffic, time of day, other

running applications, or anything else that may indicate a correlation with the behavior on both the

Collector machine and the Agent machine. For Windows machines, Task Manager should provide you

with this information (as seen in the image below).

General Troubleshooting Guidelines

VMware, Inc. 9

For example, if collections are stalling at a specific step in the process, you may occasionally find that a

single CPU is running at 100% capacity. This may indicate any number of problems, but knowing that the

CPU running at 100% always correlates with the behavior you are investigating is the most important

thing at this stage. With this approach, you may be able to isolate a specific time of day, or a set of

conditions that must be present for the undesired behavior to occur.

Another good method for identifying external factors is reviewing Event Log. Many simple problems may

be detected by reviewing the Security and Application logs. The most common errors you will see in the

Event Log are authentication problems (as seen below), but any error or warning message occurring in

the Event Viewer during the time frame surrounding the undesired behavior is suspect, especially if the

same error message always accompanies the undesired behavior.

Errors and behaviors that involve hardware problems or failures may be extremely erratic. You may see

a series of seemingly unrelated errors occur in sequence, or you may see the same error at random times.

You may also see that the behavior of VCM appears to degrade over time. These sorts of behaviors may

indicate a need for system hardware diagnostics.

Check the Debug Log

VCM produces several files in various locations through its normal operation with the extension “.dbe”.

The .dbe files contain information about VCM operations. The Collector also writes debug information to

the database whenever jobs are running in the Portal.

The Collector log is the most important log file as it records the primary functionality of VCM, and when

VMware Customer Support technicians speak of “the debug log” in the singular, they are typically

referring to this Collector debug log. Debug logs are a common troubleshooting tool for VMware

Customer Support technicians, so you may already be very familiar with the process of gathering them.

You may even recognize several of the messages mentioned in the logs, which may or may not be helpful.

VCM Troubleshooting Guide

10 VMware, Inc.

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