First published on TECHNET on Jan 21, 2009
Anyone ever had problems with the admin console crashing? How about the crash happening each time the admin console refreshes? Or perhaps troubleshooting has identified that the problem only occurs when a particular host is refreshed? Ever wonder why this is happening? While there are many potential causes of this problem, I want to take a few minutes and discuss one potential cause and provide you with some possible workarounds.
The error messages displayed in the console are usually the typical 1612 (lost connectivity) or 1700 (during a refresh) and are only a symptom and not the underlying issue. You’ll need to open the VMManager log and look for the following errors which contain
PostVirtualNetworkUpdate
:
Error 1/18/2009 3:21:27 PM Virtual Machine Manager 19999 None
Description: Virtual Machine Manager (vmmservice:6452) has encountered an error and needed to exit the process. Windows generated an error report with the following parameters:
Event:VMM20
P1(appName):vmmservice
P2(appVersion):2.0.3444.0
P3(assemblyName):E.Adhc.Operations
P4(assemblyVer):2.0.3444.0
P5(methodName):M.V.E.A.VirHostDatabaseUpdater.PostVirtualNetworkUpdate
P6(exceptionType):System.NullReferenceException
P7(callstackHash):d1e7
Error 1/18/2009 3:21:27 PM Virtual Machine Manager 1 None
Description: Virtual Machine Manager (vmmservice:6452) has encountered an error and needed to exit the process. Windows generated an error report with the following parameters:
Event:VMM20
P1(appName):vmmservice
P2(appVersion):2.0.3444.0
P3(assemblyName):E.Adhc.Operations
P4(assemblyVer):2.0.3444.0
P5(methodName):M.V.E.A.VirHostDatabaseUpdater.PostVirtualNetworkUpdate
P6(exceptionType):System.NullReferenceException
P7(callstackHash):d1e7
The cause is that Windows is reporting 2 NICs with the same name. This issue is a known bug that will be corrected in the next version of VMM.
The workaround options at this point can be:
a) Update the network card drivers in the hope that it resets the names
b) Avoid binding virtual netowrks to either of the duplicate NICs
c) Disable all but one of the duplicate NICs on the host
d) Disable host refresh and only do on-demand refresh (for all hosts but the affected one)
e) Don’t manage the host with VMM
Note
:
Other causes have been reported that if the Host has NIC teaming enabled or has any ghosted NICs…
So, now we know what the problem is but how do we resolve it? Here are the steps that I use when confronted with this issue. First, determine which Host is experiencing the problem. Either of the following methods will work.
1. Use the devcon utility which can be downloaded from
KB311272
. After installing devcon, open a command prompt and navigate to the directory where it’s located. Then run the following commands.
devcon listclass net
devcon findall =net
The output should be identical. If not, then any additional devices will have to be manually deleted from the Host.
2. Open a command prompt and type the following command:
systeminfo
(if local)
systeminfo /s <machine_name>
(if remote)
The output will display all NICs for a given machine.
Now the final step is to actually remove the ghosted NIC from the Host. Again, we’ll want to use the DEVCON utility.
1. From the output from the previous devcon commands, locate the ghosted NIC. The line will look similar to the following:
PCIVEN_14E4&DEV_1677&SUBSYS_01A81028&REV_014&22443A69&0&00E5: Broadcom NetXtreme 57xx Gigabit Controller
2. Remove the ghosted NIC by typing the following command:
devcon –r remove “PCIVEN_14E4&DEV_1677&SUBSYS_01A81028&REV_014&22443A69&0&00E5: Broadcom NetXtreme 57xx Gigabit Controller”
For additional information on this process please refer to
KB269155
.
Mike Briggs
Sr. Support Escalation Engineer
Enterprise Platforms Support | SCVMM | Cluster
