Troubleshooting General Issues

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This topic provides assistance with general troubleshooting of System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) issues.

To troubleshoot Virtual Server 2005 or virtual machines, see the Virtual Server Operations Guide: Troubleshooting (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=87204).

Troubleshooting tips

  • You may notice that VMM server CPU performance degrades after approximately 150-300 hosts are added. As the number of hosts increases above 150-300 or so, .NET garbage collection starts to take too many CPU cycles. To fix this you should enable server garbage collection, according to the information at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=98967. This server garbage collection runs faster when two or more processors exist on the VMM server. To enable garbage collection, create a configuration file named vmmservice.exe.config and save it to the \bin directory of the VMM server installation folder. The contents of the file are as follows:

    <configuration>
   <runtime>
      <gcServer enabled="true"/>
   </runtime>
</configuration>

  • You may notice the VMM server CPU usage reaching 100% every 30-60 seconds from MonitoringHost.exe. This can occur if the OpsMgr 2007 service is exceeding the Process/Private Bytes threshold. This triggers a service restart, which triggers discovery scripts. To fix this, increase the threshold for the Process\Private Bytes monitors in Operations Manager as follows for Health Service Handle Count Threshold and Health Service Private Bytes Threshold:
    1.  Click each offending monitor, and then choose Override Monitor - For a Group. Choose Management Server Computer Group.
    2.  Select the Override check box for Agent Performance Monitor Type – Threshold, and use the following override values:

    • Health Service Handle Count Threshold 2000 - 10000
    • Health Service Private Bytes Threshold 104857600 - 1610612736

  • For any error involving online conversion of a physical server (P2V) and the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS), first determine the VSS writer responsible by scanning the application and system event logs on the source machine. Try to fix the issue indicated (such as not enough disk space). Then try restarting the service associated with the VSS writer failure message, and then run the Convert Physical Server Wizard again.

  • For any host whose Status property is 'Not Responding,' find the source of the error using the Jobs view. In the Jobs view, select a job and then click the Change Tracking tab in the details pane. Then navigate down the list of jobs until you find a job where the Status property changed from 'Responding' to 'Not Responding'. Once you find this job, click the Summary tab in the details pane to understand why your host is marked as Not Responding.

  • For any error that occurs after installation, isolate group policy as a possible factor by moving the virtual machine to its own organizational unit in Active Directory with a block on inherited policy and trying to reproduce the problem. If you cannot reproduce the problem, it is likely that a group policy setting is a contributing cause.

  • For general database connection errors to a remote SQL server, check that the remote SQL server is running under an account other than Local System. If that is not the issue, check that the Service Principal Name (SPN) was created for the SQL service according to the instructions at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=88057.
    For further instructions on setting up a remote Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database, see Configuring a Remote Instance of SQL Server for Virtual Machine Manager at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=87356.
    A P2V error 554 or installation error 2917 are examples of errors you may encounter if you used an account other than the local system account during installation, or the SPN was not created correctly.

  • There are three likely causes of an error while generating a certificate for secure VMRC:

    • Entering a comma (,) into any of the fields for the certificate request. To fix this, with the host selected, click Properties, click Options, and then click Generate Certificate Request. In the Secure VMRC Certificate Request dialog box, delete any commas in the entry fields and then click Generate to try again.
    • Entering more than two characters in the Country/Region box, or more than 64 characters in any other box. If you exceed these limits, the certificate request file is created but is not valid for creating a certificate from a certification authority. To fix this, reduce the characters in the entry fields to fall within the limits and try generating the certificate request file again.
    • For long key lengths the operation can take a long time to complete and the request times out. To fix this try the operation again when more CPU resources are available.

  • If you are unable to open the Virtual Server Administration Web site with an "Access denied" error after Virtual Machine Manager installation, it is likely because the enhanced security settings in Microsoft Windows XP SP2 and in Windows Server 2003 SP1 prevent access to the Virtual Server Administration Web site. You must have sufficient DCOM permissions before you can use the Virtual Server Administration Web site to connect to Virtual Server 2005. You can also try opening the Web site on the local host. For more information, see the Knowledge Base article at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=87304.

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