VmWare and DMZ

We did sure consider if we should have a virtual solution for the dmz at all. However we came to the conclusion to have a vmware vsphere cluster of two esx servers, one in each server room.
In our cluster for the LAN we are using blade servers from HP, in DMZ we are using stand alone servers.

For easy management we have the service console in our LAN and all other networks in dmz, separated by physical network cards.
The networks in dmz are separated by VLAN ID.

The only problem is when we have to convert a physical server on the dmz to virtual. Because of that the service console is connected to the LAN, and we don´t want any server from the DMZ to talk on the LAN. (It is called DMZ for a reason). The solution to that is to only use offline converts of servers in dmz. To physically go down to the server room, shut down the server, reconnect the network card to a LAN port on the switch and boot up with the VMWare converter offline CD (coldclone.iso).

The cons of that is that we have a longer downtime comparing to online converting (Wich works perfectly if you have a quite static server, as web-servers, application servers and so on), the pros is that it is safer in a secure point of view.

However, if you are setting up a similar enviroment, make sure that you are using a gigabit connection to the service console.. It takes a looong time to convert a server on a 100 mbit connection...

Failed netbackup flashbackup

We have had a couple of redberries in netbackup for some time on one virtual converted server.

"Snapshot error encountered(156)"  is the only thing that netbackup are reporting.

So, I tried to take a manual flashbackup of the server to se what happened in vsphere tasks.

The job "Create virtual machine snapshot" ended with the error code
"Cannot create a quiesced snapshot because the create snapshot operation exceeded the time limit for holding off I/O in the frozen virtual machine."

Tried to do a manual snapshot, and did not got any error, however, when checking "Quiesce guest file system(Needs VMWare Tools installed" it would create the same error.

It had to be something with vmware tools and vss so I simply tried to uninstall vmware tools, reboot, and install it again, however it did not work anyway.







Checked the event-viever on the server and noticed som error codes from vss in the application log:

"An internal inconsistency was detected in trying to contact shadow copy service writers." with event ID: 12302
















Googled around found a solution and ran the following commands to reregister vss:

cd /d %windir%\system32
Net stop vss
Net stop swprv
regsvr32 ole32.dll
regsvr32 oleaut32.dll
regsvr32 vss_ps.dll
vssvc /register
regsvr32 /i swprv.dll
regsvr32 /i eventcls.dll
regsvr32 es.dll
regsvr32 stdprov.dll
regsvr32 vssui.dll
regsvr32 msxml.dll
regsvr32 msxml3.dll
regsvr32 msxml4.dll


It worked perfectly after that.

The cause of the problem is however still unknown, but I suspect that some techie in our department have run the Microsoft Security Wizard and made some registry changes from that.

Converted a DELL PowerEdge 1950 today and got some problems from VMWare Converter saying "Operating system not found".
I suspected it could be the Raid Drivers that was missing and the converter could not see the disk.
I downloaded the drivers for DELL PERC 6/i Integrated from Dell Support executed the file wich extracted the driverfiles to c:\dell\drivers\R194151
Then add the driverfiles to the iso with the petool.exe:

"petool.exe -i coldclone.iso -d C:\dell\drivers\R194151"

Burned the iso to a blanc cd-r and booted up with the CD. Worked perfect and vmware converter found the disks.