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
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EN-000476-00

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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Repository.index is no longer valid 27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
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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
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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 [e-mail].
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.
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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.
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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:
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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.
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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
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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.
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