My buddy Jonathan Jordan recently came across an interesting issue and wrote up a great solution, and since he’s out today I thought I’d take the liberty of posting it.  If you ever find yourself in a position where you tried to remove a VM but it ended up being stuck in a state of limbo then this one’s for you:

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Issue: A VM has been removed from SCVMM but still appears in the VMM Admin Console. The VM may have been removed in Hyper-V, SCVMM, or Cluster Administrator. When the VM is right clicked on there are two choices: Repair and Delete. Neither work.

Environment:
Windows 2003 with SCVMM 2007
Windows 2008 with SCVMM 2008

Resolution: If after attempting to remove the VM through normal means the machine name is still present, perform these steps:

> Method 1: Locate the .XML file for the machine and delete it.
- On the host that the VM ran on (or hosts if you are unsure which one), at a command prompt:
     Type the drive letter to change to such as C: and hit enter, then...
         dir *.xml /s | find /i "vm name"
- Replacing "vm name" with the name of the VM, this will search a volume for the .XML file that describes the VM
- Move the .XML file to a location that SCVMM does not use for hosted VMs or Library files
- Refresh SCVMM Admin Console

> Method 2: Force removal of VM with PowerShell.  If Method 1 did not work, follow the steps below then refresh the SCVMM Admin Console:

- In the SCVMM Admin Console click the 'PowerShell' button. Type 'A' for 'Always' if prompted by security
- Test PowerShell (this will just list information so that you will know that PowerShell is working properly):
     Get-VMMServer -ComputerName localhost
- This should just list out some VMM info

- Remove VM: Replace "VM Name" with the name of the VM as it appears in SCVMM
$VM = Get-VM -Name "VM Name"
Remove-VM -VM $VM -Force

Note: If the virtual machine still exists as an .XML file as mentioned in Method 1, refresher will repopulate the VM as being present

Have you ever run into a situation where a failed P2V or other job leaves you with a VM you cannot delete?  I have and it usually ends up looking something like this:

Recently we’ve had a couple of cases come in where a VM was stuck in the Creating State in the SCVMM 2008 console due to a P2V or some other failure. When this happens there is no apparent way to resolve this issue using either the Users Interface or a Powershell script. During my last encounter, the first thing we tried was the following Powershell command lines:

Get-VMMServer -ComputerName <vmm server name>

$VM = Get-VM -Name "<name of vm in admin console>"

Remove-VM -VM $VM –Force

But this failed with:

Remove-VM : VMM cannot remove the virtual machine because it is in the Creating

... state. (Error ID: 809, Detailed Error: )

Change the virtual machine's state, and then try the operation again.

To restart the job, run the following command:

PS> Restart-Job -Job (Get-VMMServer ERACHVVMM | Get-Job | where { $_.ID -eq "{b

59780cd-0e6f-40ce-bcb5-01bf8ebf1f6b}"})

At line:1 char:10

+ Remove-VM <<<< -VM $VM –Force

This script had worked great in the past but didn’t work in this situation, and so far the only way we know to remove this type of VM is to implement the procedure below:

First back up the VMM database

1. In Administration view, click General, and then, in the Actions pane, click Back up Virtual Machine Manager:

2. In the Virtual Machine Manager Backup dialog box, type the path for a destination folder for the backup file. The folder must not be a root directory and must be accessible to the SQL Server:

When complete, your SCVMM backup file should look something like this:

Next we need to edit some tables in the SQL database.  If you are using the SQL Server 2005 Express Edition that comes with the SCVMM 2008 product you will not have a way to access the VirtualManagerDB VMM database tables by default.  If you have SQL Server 2005 you may need to install the SQL Server Management Studio if it was not already installed. In either case you will need the SQL Server Management Studio to access the tables.  If you don’t have it installed you can download it here:

Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express

Once you have SQL Server Management Studio installed launch it and drill down to the VirtualManagerDB tables node:

Once there scroll down and find the tbl_WLC_VObject table, right click on it and choose “ Open Table”:

You should see something like this:

What we want to do is change the ObjectStateValue from 100 to 1 and hit Enter.  After that just do a refresh on the Hyper-V Host that “Bad Box” is hosted on and notice that its status has changed to Stopped!

The VM should wind up in either the Stopped or Missing state and you should have the option to delete this VM.  Go ahead and delete it now. 

That’s it!

Many thanks to Steve Thomas who did the research which is the foundation of this process and Jason Alanis who duplicated it and ironed out some of the details.

Enjoy,

John Behneman | App-V and SCVMM Support Engineer

Adding a managed host in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 may fail with the following error messages:

From the VMM admin console:

Error (2927)
A Hardware Management error has occurred trying to contact server %server.
(Unknown error 0x8033809d))

Recommended Actions
Check that WinRM is installed and running on server %server.  For more information use the command "winrm helpmsg hrresult".

The following event may also be logged in the System event log :

Log Name:       System
Source:            Microsoft-Windows-Security-Kerberos
Date:               23/04/2009 2:08:30 PM
Event ID:          4
Task Category: None
Level:              Error
Keywords:         Classic
User:               N/A
Computer:        %server%.
Description:  The Kerberos client received a KRB_AP_ERR_MODIFIED error from the server %server%. The target name used was HTTP/%server%.. This indicates that the target server failed to decrypt the ticket provided by the client. This can occur when the target server principal name (SPN) is registered on an account other than the account the target service is using. Please ensure that the target SPN is registered on, and only registered on, the account used by the server. This error can also happen when the target service is using a different password for the target service account than what the Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC) has for the target service account. Please ensure that the service on the server and the KDC are both updated to use the current password. If the server name is not fully qualified, and the target domain (DOMAIN.COM) is different from the client domain (DOMAIN.COM), check if there are identically named server accounts in these two domains, or use the fully-qualified name to identify the server.

Cause: This problem occurs because two or more computer accounts have the same service principal name (SPN) registered. Event ID 11 is logged when the Key Distribution Center (KDC) receives a ticket request, and the related SPN exists more than one time when it is checked on the global catalog (GC) for forest wide verification.

Resolution: To resolve this problem, locate the computer or user accounts that have the duplicate SPNs.  When you have located the computers that have the duplicate SPNs, you can delete the computer account from the domain, disjoin and rejoin the computer to the domain, or you can use ADSIEdit to correct the SPN on the computer that has the incorrect SPN.

To locate the computer accounts that have the duplicate SPNs, use the following steps :

1.    Use the querySpn.vbs script in the following Microsoft TechNet article. To use the script, copy the code, paste it into Notepad, and then save the script as querySpn.vbs.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/solutions/spnquery.mspx

2.    Run the script by using the following command:

    cscript spnquery.vbs HOST/mycomputer* > c:\check_SPN.txt

3.    Open the check_SPN.txt file in Notepad, and then search for the SPN that is reported in the event log.

4.    Note the user accounts and the computer accounts under which the SPN is located.

5.    Use ADSIedit.msc to remove the duplicate SPN and register on correct object.

Mike Briggs | Senior Support Escalation Engineer

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you have a bunch of virtual machines (VMs) where the OWNER value is set to UNKNOWN and you wanted to set a value owner without having to modify them one VM at a time?  If so there’s a PowerShell command that we can use to accomplish this:

Get-VM -VMMServer "vmm server FQDN" | where {$_.Owner -eq "Unknown"} | Set-VM -Owner "domain\account"

Presto, now your VMs have an owner as dictated by the account you used above.  So why might the owner even matter?  Well one instance where this is important is when you want to use the self-service portal to display all the VMs since to accomplish this the owner value need to be set to an account that is part of a Self-Service user role.

The VMs that show up in Self-Service are for Self-Service users only, not necessarily administrators, although an administrator can be part of a self-service user role.  However, he or she will only see the VMs that they own. If the user is not part of a Self Service user role, they will not be able to log into the web site.

There may be other reasons too but that’s the big one, and now if you ever find a need to do a mass change over the script above should hopefully save you a little time.

Alvin Morales | Senior Support Engineer

When trying to install the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Administrator Console, it may fail during the Prerequisites Check with the following error message:

To continue, you must complete all prerequisites. Resolve all error conditions listed below and the click Check Again. For more information about required configurations, see Virtual Machine Manager System Requirements.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager requires Windows PowerShell 1.0 or 2.0. 

We have a new Knowledge Base article that discusses this issue and you can read all the details at the link below:

KB974887 - Error message when trying to install the VMM Admin Console: "System Center Virtual Machine Manager requires Windows PowerShell 1.0 or 2.0"

J.C. Hornbeck | Manageability Knowledge Engineer

When using the System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 R2 console to share an ISO file, the following error may occur:

Error (12700)
VMM cannot complete the Hyper-V operation on the %ServerName; server because of the error: User Account does not have sufficient privilege to open attachment (path to ISO file)
Error: 'General access denied error' (0x80070005).
(Unknown error (0x8001))

Recommended Action
Resolve the issue in Hyper-V and then try the operation again.

This issue may occur if the Hyper-V host was unable to read the attributes associated with the SCVMM service account in Active Directory.

For the latest information on how to troubleshoot and resolve this issue please see the following Knowledge Base article:

KB2285882 - Access denied error when configuring shared ISO feature on a VM using System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008

J.C. Hornbeck | System Center Knowledge Engineer

When you try to connect to a Virtual Machine (VM) from the System Center Virtual Machine Manager console you may get the following error:

"A certification authority could not be contacted for authentication.

If you are using a Remote Desktop Gateway with a smart card, try connecting to the remote computer using a password.

For assistance, contact your administrator or technical support"

This can occur if you have performed an authoritative restoration on the Users container in the Active Directory directory service.  When this is done the version number of the KRBTGT account increases which is a service account that is used by the Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC) service.

Resolution:

This is essentially the same issue as the one documented in the following Knowledge Base article:

KB939820 - Events 1925, 1006, 1645, 1055, 40961 on a Windows Server 2008-based domain controller or error message: "No authority could be contacted for authentication" when you use Remote Desktop Connection

To resolve the issue apply the hotfix specified in the Knowledge Base article above. Note that you must restart the computer after you apply this hotfix.

Satish Phatge | System Center Support Engineer

Here's another KB we published this morning.  This one talks about an issue where doing a host refresh in the SCVMM 2008 admin console generates error 2912 with 0x800700A4:

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Symptoms

In the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (SCVMM) Administrators console, a host refresh may fail with the following error:

Error (2912)
An internal error has occurred trying to contact an agent on the agent %servername%.contoso.com server.    (No more threads can be created in the system (0x800700A4))

Recommended Action
Ensure the agent is installed and running. Ensure the WS-Management service is installed and running, then restart the agent.

The hex code 0x800700A4 equates to ERROR_MAX_THRDS_REACHED

In addition, the following error message may be displayed in the System event log on the managed host:

Error 1605
“The processing of Group Policy failed. Windows could not evaluate the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) filter for the Group Policy object”

When this occurs the host status will also change from "Ok" to "Needs Attention".  Further inspection of the host properties will reveal that the agent status is "Not Responding".

Cause

Typically, the "Needs Attention" host status is displayed if the SCVMM server is unable to communicate with the agent on the managed host.  However, in this specific example the communication to the host is working normally (RDP and PING works) but the host is unable to perform any actions required to update the VMM server. 

Note : This issue is very rare and has only been reported in scenarios with large VM deployments on a managed host.

Resolution

This problem has been known to occur if the WMI service is non-responsive or backed up on the problem host.
1. Open the Services.msc snap in.
2. Click on Start followed by Run.
3. Type "services.msc" without the quotes and press Enter. This will open the Services snap-in
4. Right click on "Windows Management Instrumentation" and select "Restart"

Note : The following system components depend upon WMI:

·         Hyper-V Image Management Service
·         Hyper-V Networking Management Service
·         Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management
·         Internet Connection Sharing
·         IP Helper
·         Microsoft iSCSI Software Target
·         SMS Agent Host
·         SMS Task Sequence Agent
·         Virtual Machine Manager Agent

5. Right click on the "Virtual Machine Manager Agent" and select "Restart"

Note: If VMM is in the process of refreshing this host while the WMI service is restarting, it may result in the following error:

Error (2916)
VMM is unable to complete the request. The connection to the agent %server_name%.contoso.com was lost.
(Unknown error (0x80338126))

Recommended Action
Ensure that the WS-Management service and the agent are installed and running and that a firewall is not blocking HTTP traffic. If the error persists, reboot %server_name%.contoso.com and then try the operation again.

6. In the VMM administrators console, select the Hosts tab in the lower left hand corner and right click on the problem host and select "Refresh"

More Information

This error is not indicative of a problem with SCVMM, but more likely a Windows performance related issue on the managed host.  While the managed host is in this state, connectivity via PING or RDP should still function normally although expect delayed logon times and the Hyper-V snap-in may not load either local or remote.

Please refer to the following article for the recommended hotfixes for VMM: KB2397711 - Recommended hotfixes for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2

=====

For the latest version of this article see the link below:

KB2472146 - A host refresh in the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Administrators console fails with error 2912

J.C. Hornbeck | System Center Knowledge Engineer

The App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/appv/
The WSUS Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/sus/
The SCMDM Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/mdm/
The ConfigMgr Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
The SCOM 2007 Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/operationsmgr/
The SCVMM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm/
The MED-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/medv/
The DPM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
The OOB Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/oob/
The Opalis Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/opalis

Here’s a new Knowledge Base article we published this morning. This one talks about an issue you can run into if your AD groups have circular references.

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Symptoms

After changing the Self-Service Owner of a Virtual Machine (VM) to an AD Security Group in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager, the console becomes unresponsive and after a few minutes displays the following:

Attempting to reconnect

Another dialog maybe also be shown with the following:

An unknown error occurred while executing the PowerShell script:

The connection to the VMM management server <VMM Server> was lost. Ensure that the <VMM Server> is online and that you can access the server remotely from your computer. Then connect to the <VMM Server> and try the command again using the new connection. Or, you can ensure that the Virtual Machine Manager service is started on <VMM Server>. Then connect to<VMM Server> and try the command again using the new connection. If the command fails again because of a connection failure, restart the Virtual Manager service and then try the operation again.

Try the operation again. If the issue persists contact Microsoft Help and Support

ID: 27235

The Event logs will contain the following:

Log Name: System
Source: Service Control Manager
Event ID: 7031
Level: Error
Description: The System Center Virtual Machine Manager service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this <#> times(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 100 milliseconds: Restart the service.

Log Name: Application
Source: Application Error
Event ID: 1000
Level: Error
Description:
Faulting application name: vmmservice.exe, version: 3.0.####.0, time stamp: 0x4e92b38a
Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 6.1.7601.17651, time stamp: 0x4e21213c
Exception code: 0xe053534f
Fault offset: 0x000000000000cacd
Faulting process id: 0x%9
Faulting application start time: 0x%10
Faulting application path: %11
Faulting module path: %12
Report Id: %13

Cause

This can occur if the AD security group's membership is such that it is part of a circular membership. In the following example, adding any of the AD groups would result in the failure because Group_Users is a member of Group_VMMSSU and contains references to Group_VMMSSU:

Group_VMMSSU
> Group_Users
> > Group_VMMSSU

> Group_Admins
> > Group_2

It is this circular membership that results in the vmmservice encountering a StackOverflowException [Exception code: 0xe053534f] and terminating unexpectedly.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, review the AD group membership for any circular references and remove them. If the circular reference is not obvious, the script below can list the nested members of a particular group.

NOTE Use Active Directory Users and Computers to determine the top most group of the group causing issues.

dsquery group -name "Group_VMMSSU" | dsget group -members -expand

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For the most current version of this article please see the following:

2680843 : Changing the owner of a VM in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager causes the console to become unresponsive

J.C. Hornbeck| System Center & Security Knowledge Engineer

Get the latest System Center news onFacebookandTwitter:

App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/appv/
ConfigMgr Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
DPM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
MED-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/medv/
Orchestrator Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
SCVMM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm
Server App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/serverappv
Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
System Center Essentials Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenteressentials
WSUS Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/sus/

The Forefront Server Protection blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/fss/
The Forefront Endpoint Security blog : http://blogs.technet.com/b/clientsecurity/
The Forefront Identity Manager blog : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ms-identity-support/
The Forefront TMG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/isablog/
The Forefront UAG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/edgeaccessblog/

Here’s a new Knowledge Base article we published. This one talks about an issue where the SCVMM 2012 console terminates with NullReferenceException after adding an ESX 4.1 host.

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Symptoms

After adding an ESX 4.1 host to System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) fabric, the VMM console may terminate unexpectedly.
In reviewing the application log you find the following event:

Log Name: Application
Source: Windows Error Reporting
Event ID: 1001
Task Category: None
Level: Information
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Description:
Fault bucket , type 0
Event Name: VMM20
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0

Problem signature:
P1: vmmservice
P2: 3.0.6019.0
P3: E.Adhc.Operations
P4: 3.0.6019.0
P5: M.V.E.A.VMWareESXHostDataProperties.GetHostManagementPorts
P6: System.NullReferenceException
P7: 6b59
P8:
P9:
P10:

or

Log Name: Application
Source: Windows Error Reporting
Event ID: 1001
Task Category: None
Level: Information
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Description:
Fault bucket , type 0
Event Name: VMM20
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0

Problem signature:
P1: vmmservice
P2: 3.0.6019.0
P3: VMWareImplementation
P4: 3.0.6005.0
P5: M.C.V.VmwVMService.PopulateDistributedNetworkingData
P6: System.NullReferenceException
P7: 3b81
P8:
P9:
P10:

NOTE To ensure you are encountering the issue discussed here, verify that the values shown in the Windows Error report log have the same values for P5 and P6 as seen in one of the above examples

Cause

This is a known issue in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager. The issue is related to the absence of a standard VMware virtual switch (vSwitch) on the VMware hosts. The VMM refresher fails to handle such a configuration.

Resolution

To verify the problem host perform the following steps:

Open vSphere Client
- Open Hosts and Clusters
- Select Host, Go to Configuration tab
- Select Networking, you should see no vSphere Standard Switches.

To workaround this issue, create a vSwitch on each failing host using the VMware management tools such as vSphere client.

=====

For the most current version of this article please see the following:

2709961 - The System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager console terminates unexpectedly with NullReferenceException

J.C. Hornbeck| System Center & Security Knowledge Engineer

Get the latest System Center news onFacebookandTwitter:

App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/appv/
ConfigMgr Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
DPM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
MED-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/medv/
Orchestrator Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
SCVMM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm
Server App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/serverappv
Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
System Center Essentials Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenteressentials
WSUS Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/sus/

The Forefront Server Protection blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/fss/
The Forefront Endpoint Security blog : http://blogs.technet.com/b/clientsecurity/
The Forefront Identity Manager blog : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ms-identity-support/
The Forefront TMG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/isablog/
The Forefront UAG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/edgeaccessblog/

Here’s a new Knowledge Base article we published. This one talks about an issue where attempting to remove VMware vCenter from VMM 2012 fails with error 0x8007274D.

=====

Symptoms

When trying to remove the VMware vCenter 4.1 from System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), the action fails with the error:
VMM cannot complete the VMware operation on the SERVERNAME$ server because of the error: Unable to connect to the remote server
Resolve the issue in VMware and then try the operation again.

ID: 12701
Details: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it (0x8007274D)
Also, every few minutes the following error is displayed under the Jobs tab:

Error (12701)
VMM cannot complete the VMware operation on the SERVERNAME$ server because of the error: Unable to connect to the remote server
No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it (0x8007274D)

Recommended action
Resolve the issue in VMware and then try the operation again.

Cause

System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager needs to communicate with the VMware vCenter in order to remove it from the VMM server. In situations when VMM is not able to communicate with the VMware vCenter (i.e. vCenter server was lost or network issues), it is not possible to directly remove the VMware vCenter.

Resolution

One option is re-install VMM with the new database.

The second option requires a few steps. In summary, a new virtual machine needs to be created and then joined to the domain under the same name as the previous vCenter server. VMware vCenter server will need to be also installed on this virtual machine. By doing this, VMM will think that the old vCenter server is back. However, since by default the communication between the VMM and vCenter servers is encrypted, VMM will give an error stating that it cannot communicate with vCenter server because of the invalid certificates. Thus, we will also have to generate a new vCenter certificate on the VMM server. More detailed steps are shown below:

1. Create a new Virtual Machine.

2. Install Windows Server 2008 R2 (or older Windows version supported by VMware vCenter) with the required updates.

3. Join the Virtual Machine to the domain under the same computer name as the original computer with which the contact was lost. For example, if the original vCenter server's computer name was vcenter.contoso.com then the newly created Virtual Machine should be joined to the domain as vcenter.contoso.com.

4. Install VMware vCenter and VMware vSphere client on the newly created VM.

5. On the VMM server, open the Certificates Snap-in (Computer Account) (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms788967.aspx) and delete the VMware default certificate located under Trusted People/Certificates.

6. Launch the VMM PowerShell on the VMM server, type and run the following command:

$Virtman = Get-virtualizationmanager –computername “VirtMgrServer01.Contoso.com”
$Cert = Get-certificate –computername “VirtMgrServer01.Contoso.com”
Set-VirtualizationManager –VirtualizationManager $VirtMan –Certificate $Cert

Where VirtMgrServer01.Contoso.com is the FQDN of your newly created VMware vCenter server.

7. In the VMM console, right click on the VMware vCenter server and select Refresh. vCenter server should be successfully refreshed.

8. Right click on the VMware vCenter and select Remove. The vCenter should be successfully removed from the VMM server.

More Information

How to: View Certificates with the MMC Snap-in: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms788967.aspx
How to Replace the Certificate for a VMware VirtualCenter Server: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc974213

=====

For the most current version of this article please see the following:

2730029 - Attempting to remove VMware vCenter from System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager fails with error 0x8007274D

J.C. Hornbeck| System Center & Security Knowledge Engineer

Get the latest System Center news onFacebookandTwitter:

App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/appv/
ConfigMgr Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
DPM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
MED-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/medv/
Orchestrator Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
SCVMM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm
Server App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/serverappv
Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
System Center Essentials Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenteressentials
WSUS Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/sus/

The Forefront Server Protection blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/fss/
The Forefront Endpoint Security blog : http://blogs.technet.com/b/clientsecurity/
The Forefront Identity Manager blog : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ms-identity-support/
The Forefront TMG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/isablog/
The Forefront UAG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/edgeaccessblog/

My buddy Jonathan Jordan recently came across an interesting issue and wrote up a great solution, and since he’s out today I thought I’d take the liberty of posting it.  If you ever find yourself in a position where you tried to remove a VM but it ended up being stuck in a state of limbo then this one’s for you:

========

Issue: A VM has been removed from SCVMM but still appears in the VMM Admin Console. The VM may have been removed in Hyper-V, SCVMM, or Cluster Administrator. When the VM is right clicked on there are two choices: Repair and Delete. Neither work.

Environment:
Windows 2003 with SCVMM 2007
Windows 2008 with SCVMM 2008

Resolution: If after attempting to remove the VM through normal means the machine name is still present, perform these steps:

> Method 1: Locate the .XML file for the machine and delete it.
- On the host that the VM ran on (or hosts if you are unsure which one), at a command prompt:
     Type the drive letter to change to such as C: and hit enter, then...
         dir *.xml /s | find /i "vm name"
- Replacing "vm name" with the name of the VM, this will search a volume for the .XML file that describes the VM
- Move the .XML file to a location that SCVMM does not use for hosted VMs or Library files
- Refresh SCVMM Admin Console

> Method 2: Force removal of VM with PowerShell.  If Method 1 did not work, follow the steps below then refresh the SCVMM Admin Console:

- In the SCVMM Admin Console click the 'PowerShell' button. Type 'A' for 'Always' if prompted by security
- Test PowerShell (this will just list information so that you will know that PowerShell is working properly):
     Get-VMMServer -ComputerName localhost
- This should just list out some VMM info

- Remove VM: Replace "VM Name" with the name of the VM as it appears in SCVMM
$VM = Get-VM -Name "VM Name"
Remove-VM -VM $VM -Force

Note: If the virtual machine still exists as an .XML file as mentioned in Method 1, refresher will repopulate the VM as being present

Have you ever run into a situation where a failed P2V or other job leaves you with a VM you cannot delete?  I have and it usually ends up looking something like this:

Recently we’ve had a couple of cases come in where a VM was stuck in the Creating State in the SCVMM 2008 console due to a P2V or some other failure. When this happens there is no apparent way to resolve this issue using either the Users Interface or a Powershell script. During my last encounter, the first thing we tried was the following Powershell command lines:

Get-VMMServer -ComputerName <vmm server name>

$VM = Get-VM -Name "<name of vm in admin console>"

Remove-VM -VM $VM –Force

But this failed with:

Remove-VM : VMM cannot remove the virtual machine because it is in the Creating

... state. (Error ID: 809, Detailed Error: )

Change the virtual machine's state, and then try the operation again.

To restart the job, run the following command:

PS> Restart-Job -Job (Get-VMMServer ERACHVVMM | Get-Job | where { $_.ID -eq "{b

59780cd-0e6f-40ce-bcb5-01bf8ebf1f6b}"})

At line:1 char:10

+ Remove-VM <<<< -VM $VM –Force

This script had worked great in the past but didn’t work in this situation, and so far the only way we know to remove this type of VM is to implement the procedure below:

First back up the VMM database

1. In Administration view, click General, and then, in the Actions pane, click Back up Virtual Machine Manager:

2. In the Virtual Machine Manager Backup dialog box, type the path for a destination folder for the backup file. The folder must not be a root directory and must be accessible to the SQL Server:

When complete, your SCVMM backup file should look something like this:

Next we need to edit some tables in the SQL database.  If you are using the SQL Server 2005 Express Edition that comes with the SCVMM 2008 product you will not have a way to access the VirtualManagerDB VMM database tables by default.  If you have SQL Server 2005 you may need to install the SQL Server Management Studio if it was not already installed. In either case you will need the SQL Server Management Studio to access the tables.  If you don’t have it installed you can download it here:

Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express

Once you have SQL Server Management Studio installed launch it and drill down to the VirtualManagerDB tables node:

Once there scroll down and find the tbl_WLC_VObject table, right click on it and choose “ Open Table”:

You should see something like this:

What we want to do is change the ObjectStateValue from 100 to 1 and hit Enter.  After that just do a refresh on the Hyper-V Host that “Bad Box” is hosted on and notice that its status has changed to Stopped!

The VM should wind up in either the Stopped or Missing state and you should have the option to delete this VM.  Go ahead and delete it now. 

That’s it!

Many thanks to Steve Thomas who did the research which is the foundation of this process and Jason Alanis who duplicated it and ironed out some of the details.

Enjoy,

John Behneman | App-V and SCVMM Support Engineer

Adding a managed host in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 may fail with the following error messages:

From the VMM admin console:

Error (2927)
A Hardware Management error has occurred trying to contact server %server.
(Unknown error 0x8033809d))

Recommended Actions
Check that WinRM is installed and running on server %server.  For more information use the command "winrm helpmsg hrresult".

The following event may also be logged in the System event log :

Log Name:       System
Source:            Microsoft-Windows-Security-Kerberos
Date:               23/04/2009 2:08:30 PM
Event ID:          4
Task Category: None
Level:              Error
Keywords:         Classic
User:               N/A
Computer:        %server%.
Description:  The Kerberos client received a KRB_AP_ERR_MODIFIED error from the server %server%. The target name used was HTTP/%server%.. This indicates that the target server failed to decrypt the ticket provided by the client. This can occur when the target server principal name (SPN) is registered on an account other than the account the target service is using. Please ensure that the target SPN is registered on, and only registered on, the account used by the server. This error can also happen when the target service is using a different password for the target service account than what the Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC) has for the target service account. Please ensure that the service on the server and the KDC are both updated to use the current password. If the server name is not fully qualified, and the target domain (DOMAIN.COM) is different from the client domain (DOMAIN.COM), check if there are identically named server accounts in these two domains, or use the fully-qualified name to identify the server.

Cause: This problem occurs because two or more computer accounts have the same service principal name (SPN) registered. Event ID 11 is logged when the Key Distribution Center (KDC) receives a ticket request, and the related SPN exists more than one time when it is checked on the global catalog (GC) for forest wide verification.

Resolution: To resolve this problem, locate the computer or user accounts that have the duplicate SPNs.  When you have located the computers that have the duplicate SPNs, you can delete the computer account from the domain, disjoin and rejoin the computer to the domain, or you can use ADSIEdit to correct the SPN on the computer that has the incorrect SPN.

To locate the computer accounts that have the duplicate SPNs, use the following steps :

1.    Use the querySpn.vbs script in the following Microsoft TechNet article. To use the script, copy the code, paste it into Notepad, and then save the script as querySpn.vbs.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/solutions/spnquery.mspx

2.    Run the script by using the following command:

    cscript spnquery.vbs HOST/mycomputer* > c:\check_SPN.txt

3.    Open the check_SPN.txt file in Notepad, and then search for the SPN that is reported in the event log.

4.    Note the user accounts and the computer accounts under which the SPN is located.

5.    Use ADSIedit.msc to remove the duplicate SPN and register on correct object.

Mike Briggs | Senior Support Escalation Engineer

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you have a bunch of virtual machines (VMs) where the OWNER value is set to UNKNOWN and you wanted to set a value owner without having to modify them one VM at a time?  If so there’s a PowerShell command that we can use to accomplish this:

Get-VM -VMMServer "vmm server FQDN" | where {$_.Owner -eq "Unknown"} | Set-VM -Owner "domain\account"

Presto, now your VMs have an owner as dictated by the account you used above.  So why might the owner even matter?  Well one instance where this is important is when you want to use the self-service portal to display all the VMs since to accomplish this the owner value need to be set to an account that is part of a Self-Service user role.

The VMs that show up in Self-Service are for Self-Service users only, not necessarily administrators, although an administrator can be part of a self-service user role.  However, he or she will only see the VMs that they own. If the user is not part of a Self Service user role, they will not be able to log into the web site.

There may be other reasons too but that’s the big one, and now if you ever find a need to do a mass change over the script above should hopefully save you a little time.

Alvin Morales | Senior Support Engineer

When trying to install the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Administrator Console, it may fail during the Prerequisites Check with the following error message:

To continue, you must complete all prerequisites. Resolve all error conditions listed below and the click Check Again. For more information about required configurations, see Virtual Machine Manager System Requirements.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager requires Windows PowerShell 1.0 or 2.0. 

We have a new Knowledge Base article that discusses this issue and you can read all the details at the link below:

KB974887 - Error message when trying to install the VMM Admin Console: "System Center Virtual Machine Manager requires Windows PowerShell 1.0 or 2.0"

J.C. Hornbeck | Manageability Knowledge Engineer

When using the System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 R2 console to share an ISO file, the following error may occur:

Error (12700)
VMM cannot complete the Hyper-V operation on the %ServerName; server because of the error: User Account does not have sufficient privilege to open attachment (path to ISO file)
Error: 'General access denied error' (0x80070005).
(Unknown error (0x8001))

Recommended Action
Resolve the issue in Hyper-V and then try the operation again.

This issue may occur if the Hyper-V host was unable to read the attributes associated with the SCVMM service account in Active Directory.

For the latest information on how to troubleshoot and resolve this issue please see the following Knowledge Base article:

KB2285882 - Access denied error when configuring shared ISO feature on a VM using System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008

J.C. Hornbeck | System Center Knowledge Engineer

When you try to connect to a Virtual Machine (VM) from the System Center Virtual Machine Manager console you may get the following error:

"A certification authority could not be contacted for authentication.

If you are using a Remote Desktop Gateway with a smart card, try connecting to the remote computer using a password.

For assistance, contact your administrator or technical support"

This can occur if you have performed an authoritative restoration on the Users container in the Active Directory directory service.  When this is done the version number of the KRBTGT account increases which is a service account that is used by the Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC) service.

Resolution:

This is essentially the same issue as the one documented in the following Knowledge Base article:

KB939820 - Events 1925, 1006, 1645, 1055, 40961 on a Windows Server 2008-based domain controller or error message: "No authority could be contacted for authentication" when you use Remote Desktop Connection

To resolve the issue apply the hotfix specified in the Knowledge Base article above. Note that you must restart the computer after you apply this hotfix.

Satish Phatge | System Center Support Engineer