VM Guests showing up as Unknown

[Jason Cordes_2]

I have a call open on this issue with HP.....it's been open now for 2 or 3 months, the last word I received is they are in talks with Microsoft about WMI....whatever that means.

-jason

[RobSmith]

Well thats super-di-dooper.
Forgive my bad mood.

[Rob Buxton]

I have been working with HP on this.

There's a number of contributions to this thread, so I'll restate that my issue was just VM Guests disappearing.

We're just going through a process of elimination. But as of this morning the VM Guests were all fine.

You may wish to check to see if you have any similar tasks.
I was running the following:
Daily Historical Data Collection from 01:00 to around 03:00. (Added by us)
Daily Device Identification task at 04:05.
(Standard task I believe)
In addition the System Automatic Discovery was running daily at 04:00. (Standard task)

I've disabled the Daily Device Identification task. This may either be the culprit or it may be because it was overlapping the System Automatic Discovery which will also do device identification.

As I mentioned there's a few more iterations to go through as I disable and re-enable things as well as putting things back to how they were to see if the problem reappears.

[RobSmith]

In My Case, system automatic discovery is disabled, so I know thats not doing it.

I added a whole bunch of VM's to the console yesterday, and they all ID'ed correctly. I come in this morning, and wouldn't you know it, they are all unknown.

[Paul Kratz]

I had a Problem very similar to yours. It disappered after upgrading to SIM 5.0 SP3.

If you didn't already give it a chance.

Regards
Paul

[RobSmith]

Nope, running SP3. Upgraded yesterday. Added the new VM's they showed up OK, then this morning they were unknown once again.

[RobSmith]

OK, this is definately related to the WMI Mapper service. After restarting the WMI Mapper service, and running and identification on the vm's, they show up correctly in SIM.

Does anyone have a case number I can send this info to? otherwise I'll get my own case, and start jumping through hoops of my own.

[Jason Cordes_2]

I have a case open on this and yes it is definitly WMI. The last word I had on this was that HP is working with Microsoft on this problem and is saying there is a problem with WMI in windows.

-jason

[Rob Buxton]

My problems reduce when I disable the Daily Device Identification task.
SP3 seems to have made no difference to this behaviour.
Just re-running an Identification task does not work.
The above fix to restart the WMI Mapper and then re-identify them does work.

[Tim McGue]

I'm seeing the same issue running 5.0 SP4. Has anyone an update on this issue?

Thanks,
Tim

[SEBEMISMNUSA]

August 30, 2006

I was able to get this workaround working, that is stopping and restarting the WMI related services (listed below) and doing a manual identification. Now, I cannot get this working on HP SIM servers.

Does anyone have ideals on why this is failing to work?

Production HP SIM computer server:
Microsoft Windows 2003 with sp # 1
Microsoft SQL 2000
HP SIM 5.0 with sp # 5

Test HP SIM computer server:
Microsoft Windows 2002 with sp # 1
MSDE
HP SIM 5.0 with sp # 4


Problem noticed, also by others
- During the discovery task . . . . the VMware virtual guest computers change from server to unknown or unmanaged . . .

Workaround fix:
Purpose - Allow VMWare virtual guest computers to be correctly recognized as computer servers.

Restart of the following WMI mapper related services.

SERVICE_NAME: WbemConsumer
DISPLAY_NAME: Pegasus WMIMapper Indications Service
sc (stop/start) wbemconsumer

SERVICE_NAME: WMI Mapper
DISPLAY_NAME: Pegasus WMI Mapper
sc (stop/start) "wmi mapper"
Note: The " double quotes are needed.

Re-run identification task. This worked from August 14 to 17, 2006.

Examples from a HP SIM report

computer 1 VMWare virtual computer VMware-50 0d 79 d6 ec f5 87 95-f . . .
computer 2 VMWare virtual computer VMware-50 0d 4f 4c b0 bd 45 bc-af . . .
computer 3 VMWare virtual computer VMware-50 0d 61 c9 c1 16 63 6e-34 . . .
computer 4 VMWare virtual computer VMware-50 0d 3b d0 dc a4 dc 13-ff a4 . . .
computer 5 VMWare virtual computer VMware-50 0d 8f d8 85 dd ae a8-69 8f c4 . . .

End

[SEBEMISMNUSA]

As I would really like to get this issue resolved, or get a workaround in place
I have stopped and restarted the Pegasus WMI Mapper, Pegasus WMIMapper Indications Service, Windows Management Instrumentation, Windows Management Instrumentation Driver Extensions, and WMI Performance Adapter services, and ran a system identification.

This HP SIM Audit log showing this.
If this had never worked fine . . but I had this working as of August 17, 2006.

Last 40 Entries Wednesday, August 30, 2006 3:28:45 PM CDT


43885: 2006-08-30 15:17:08 CDT,CONFIG,SUCCESS,MODIFY,NODE,vmguest071004,SUMMARY,HPSIMcomputer\mxadmin,0,22988,
43886: 2006-08-30 15:17:42 CDT,CONFIG,SUCCESS,MODIFY,NODE,vmguest071008,SUMMARY,HPSIMcomputer\mxadmin,0,22993,
43887: 2006-08-30 15:18:27 CDT,CONFIG,SUCCESS,MODIFY,NODE,vmguest071004,SUMMARY,HPSIMcomputer\mxadmin,0,23141,
43888: 2006-08-30 15:18:27 CDT,CONFIG,SUCCESS,MODIFY,NODE,vmguest06700,SUMMARY,HPSIMcomputer\mxadmin,0,23148,
43889: 2006-08-30 15:18:27 CDT,CONFIG,SUCCESS,MODIFY,NODE,vmguest070001,SUMMARY,HPSIMcomputer\mxadmin,0,23149,
43890: 2006-08-30 15:18:27 CDT,CONFIG,SUCCESS,MODIFY,NODE,vmguest031001,SUMMARY,HPSIMcomputer\mxadmin,0,23151,
43891: 2006-08-30 15:18:27 CDT,CONFIG,SUCCESS,MODIFY,NODE,vmguest071025,SUMMARY,HPSIMcomputer\mxadmin,0,23153,
43892: 2006-08-30 15:18:27 CDT,CONFIG,SUCCESS,MODIFY,NODE,vmguest071021,SUMMARY,HPSIMcomputer\mxadmin,0,23155,
43893: 2006-08-30 15:19:13 CDT,CONFIG,SUCCESS,MODIFY,NODE,vmguest071008,SUMMARY,HPSIMcomputer\mxadmin,0,23160,
43894: 2006-08-30 15:19:49 CDT,CONFIG,SUCCESS,MODIFY,NODE,vmguest076011,SUMMARY,HPSIMcomputer\mxadmin,0,23162,
43895: 2006-08-30 15:20:26 CDT,CONFIG,SUCCESS,MODIFY,NODE,VMguestcomputer1,SUMMARY,HPSIM\mxadmin,0,23307,
43896: 2006-08-30 15:20:26 CDT,CONFIG,SUCCESS,MODIFY,NODE,vmguest06700,SUMMARY,HPSIMcomputer\mxadmin,0,23310,
43897: 2006-08-30 15:20:26 CDT,CONFIG,SUCCESS,MODIFY,NODE,vmguest031001,SUMMARY,HPSIMcomputer\mxadmin,0,23317,
43898: 2006-08-30 15:20:26 CDT,CONFIG,SUCCESS,MODIFY,NODE,vmguest071025,SUMMARY,HPSIMcomputer\mxadmin,0,23318,
43899: 2006-08-30 15:20:26 CDT,CONFIG,SUCCESS,MODIFY,NODE,vmguest070001,SUMMARY,HPSIMcomputer\mxadmin,0,23319,
43900: 2006-08-30 15:20:26 CDT,CONFIG,SUCCESS,MODIFY,NODE,vmguest071010t,SUMMARY,HPSIMcomputer\mxadmin,0,23321,
43901: 2006-08-30 15:21:09 CDT,CONFIG,SUCCESS,MODIFY,NODE,vmguest071033t,SUMMARY,HPSIMcomputer\mxadmin,0,23326,
43902: 2006-08-30 15:21:48 CDT,CONFIG,SUCCESS,MODIFY,NODE,vmguest076011,SUMMARY,HPSIMcomputer\mxadmin,0,23338,
43903: 2006-08-30 15:22:26 CDT,CONFIG,SUCCESS,MODIFY,NODE,vmguest071010t,SUMMARY,HPSIMcomputer\mxadmin,0,23376,
43904: 2006-08-30 15:22:26 CDT,CONFIG,SUCCESS,MODIFY,NODE,vmguest071001n,SUMMARY,HPSIMcomputer\mxadmin,0,23378


End

[Rob Buxton]

The way I now have HPSIM configured ias as follows and seems to work.
Global WBEM is enabled, but there are no credentials entered. I don't want WBEM access to all of my servers.
For each VM Guest I set the server specific WBEM parameters to use a Domain Account of the form domain\Account and fill in the password details. This triggers the ID process which seems to result in a match to the VMM.

I think this is required, Under Events, Subscribe to WBEM Events.

Also check the VMM Service itself is running, I've had problems there where other apps grab the port used by VMM (1123-1124 IIRC)

[SEBEMISMNUSA]

What was done to fix this:

Rob Buxton's reply of setting WBEM resolved this issue for me.
During the discovery task (a scan of over xxx,xxx TCP/IP addresses that starts . . . . the VMware virtual guest computers change from server to unknown or unmanaged. This causes the computer server inventory to be inaccurate.

Reboot HP SIM computer Systems Protocol as this restarts all the necessary WMI related services.


Upon a restart of this computer, (set to run when CMS starts in Scheduled Tasks)

Set per-system communications protocol parameters for ICMP Ping, SNMP, WBEM, and SSH, etc.
on all computers with a system type as unknown or unmanaged

a system identification - (this is very important.

. . . . .
WBEM settings
Update values for this protocol
. . . .
and an system identification.

This finally works.
End

[Rob Buxton]

The WBEM credentials settings mentioned towards the end of the thread.
I've also kept the daily ID task disabled.
This works here.

[fishmn]

Do we have to have VMM in order to properly identify guests and identify them as actual servers? We don't see the need to pay for it when we already have Virutal Center.