VMware Site Recovery Manager 5.1 Connection & Session Limits – Updated

SRM Connection or Session Limit Reached
Scroll down for the Update

Have you ran into one of these errors before:

     [exec] AxisFault
     [exec]  faultCode: ServerFaultCode
     [exec]  faultSubcode: 
     [exec]  faultString: fault.drextapi.fault.ConnectionLimitReached.summary
     [exec]  faultActor: 
     [exec]  faultNode: 
     [exec]  faultDetail: 
     [exec]     {urn:srm0}SrmFaultConnectionLimitReachedFault:<connectionLimit>10</connectionLimit>
     [exec] fault.drextapi.fault.ConnectionLimitReached.summary

[exec] AxisFault

[exec] faultCode: ServerFaultCode

[exec] faultSubcode:

[exec] faultString: fault.drextapi.fault.ConnectionLimitReached.summary

[exec] faultActor:

[exec] faultNode:

[exec] faultDetail:

[exec] {urn:srm0}SrmFaultConnectionLimitReachedFault:<connectionLimit>10</connectionLimit>

[exec] fault.drextapi.fault.ConnectionLimitReached.summary

     [exec] AxisFault
     [exec]  faultCode: ServerFaultCode
     [exec]  faultSubcode: 
     [exec]  faultString: dr.fault.SessionLimitExceeded
     [exec]  faultActor: 
     [exec]  faultNode: 
     [exec]  faultDetail: 
     [exec] 	{urn:srm0}MethodFaultFault:<vim25:reason>Invalid fault</vim25:reason>
     [exec] dr.fault.SessionLimitExceeded
     [exec] 	at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method)
     [exec] 	at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.java:39)
     [exec] 	at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:27)

[exec] AxisFault

[exec] faultCode: ServerFaultCode

[exec] faultSubcode:

[exec] faultString: dr.fault.SessionLimitExceeded

[exec] faultActor:

[exec] faultNode:

[exec] faultDetail:

[exec] {urn:srm0}MethodFaultFault:<vim25:reason>Invalid fault</vim25:reason>

[exec] dr.fault.SessionLimitExceeded

[exec] at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method)

[exec] at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.java:39)

[exec] at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:27)

Or in the GUI:Lost connection to remote SRM server. Unable to login. The maximum number of SRM users has been reached.RJ, from RJApproves.com, & I had been plagued by these messages for weeks, maybe even months. Well, we finally got it all figured out!

Keep reading for the fix!

VMware Site Recovery Manager & Active Directory – Part 2 – Domain Controllers in test environment

On May 25th, I published this post covering some scenarios on how to use Site Recovery Manager & Active Directory. Michael White from VMware responded with some good info. He had an awesome suggestion of using a script to cold clone a DC daily to use for testing.

Let’s take a look at some ways we can get this done:

To include Active Directory or not to include Active Directory, that is the question.

I’ve been reading a lot around VMware’s Site Recovery Manager and considerations surrounding Active Directory. Most of what you will read says ‘NEVER’ protect AD with SRM, only use native AD replication, especially since SRM & vCenter at your Recovery Site require AD to be running anyway.

But what if you have multiple domains for different uses? This is where the lines become blurred. Think about this for a second:

One AD environment (single forest/domain, no trusts) where vCenter & SRM live, call it infrastructure AD
A second AD environment (also single forest/domain, no trusts) for your application servers, call it application AD
You have infrastructure AD at both sites, SRM & vCenter authenticate accordingly
Protected site has application AD
Recovery site has nothing

Now here is where I say ‘why wouldn’t you protect AD with SRM?’ In a true disaster, the protected site is gone, no AD exists anywhere, so using SRM to bring them up on the recovery site makes sense. Is my logic flawed?

However, if I had my application AD living at both sites, using native replication, I agree 100% in not including your Domain Controllers in your SRM Recovery Plan. This leads to my concern…

Testing vs Planned vs Unplanned

This post will cover testing only. I’ll write a follow-up covering planned & unplanned failovers later.

To me, the only way to really test your DR plan (in this instance, your SRM Recovery Plan) is to not have anything different between them.

How often should I conduct a disaster recovery test? – TechTarget.com contribution

I recently became a contributor on TechTarget.com by answering the common question: How often should I conduct a disaster recovery test?

Feel free to swing on over to TechTarget.com and read what I have to say, here’s a link: http://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/answer/How-often-should-I-conduct-a-disaster-recovery-test

Thanks, and happy scripting!

Site Recovery Manager 5.1 installation fails connecting to database – dbmanager could not initialize vdb connection

I recently ran into an issue when installing SRM and thought I’d share. I didn’t get a screenshot, but the error was something like this:

Failed to Initialize – dbmanager could not initialize vdb connection – odbc error

If you click skip from there, it’ll fail to create the tables, and eventually get to the point where you’ll have to roll back.

As it turns out, it was due to a c0mp73x”P@s$w0rd! that caused the problem. I’m not sure what characters killed it, but going to a less complex pAs5w0rd worked fine. ODBC worked fine, user & permissions were set up properly, it just came down to SRM not being able to handle the special characters. What’s strange is a similarly complex password works for vCenter.

Hope this helps, have fun out there!

SCCM 2007 will not auto apply drivers to newer hardware

The Problem

The hardware inventory file generated by the Auto Apply Drivers step is over 100k, which is the size limit for the MatchDriversSP process SCCM runs to provide the right drivers. The process then fails.

The Solution

Create individual driver packages for each model and have a WMI query to apply those drivers as needed.

Added VMware’s PowerCLI cmdlets to the powershell.php for WP-Syntax & GeSHi

I added a bunch of cmdlets for VMware’s PowerCLI to the cmdlets array in the powershell.php file.

So you don’t have to export and copy & paste them in to yours, I attached it to this post.

This is for the WP-Syntax plugin for WordPress that uses GeSHi to highlight certain things in the pre tag.

powershell.php

Just thought I’d share…

vMotion fails at 10% with error 0xbad010d on VMware ESXi

I recently had this problem, but forgot to take a screenshot for the blog, sorry guys.

I was patching an HA/DRS cluster using VUM and none of the VMs would migrate off one specific host. The error it gave was “A general system error occured: Failed to start migration pre-copy Error 0xbad010d. The Esx host failed connect over the VMotion network”.

How to disable driver signing requirement in Windows 8

Trying to install a driver for old hardware, or otherwise unsupported hardware, on Windows 8? I bet you’ve run across something that kept you from actually install the drivers.

While playing with my Galaxy Nexus, I ran into an issue where I could not install the ADB driver found in the Galaxy Nexus Toolkit. It told me the driver was not digitally signed, and after trying to use it, it said windows encountered a problem.

This is because Windows 8 enforces driver signing. If it’s not signed, Windows 8 says tough! Well, I found a couple ways to get by this, keep reading to find out how…

Scripting it old school! Bash shell script to apply ESX 3.5 Update 5a

So you’re still using ESX 3.5 and need to patch it manually? Bummer, I know, I’m in that boat right now, or was. I ran “esxupdate -a query” to find out the latest patch and saw, “ESX Server 3.5.0 Update 4”. Then went to VMware’s downloads site to download Update 5a, and when it prompted me to download all dependencies, I did.

What did that give me? Nineteen (19) bundles/depots/zip files, one of which was ‘ESX350-Update05a.zip’

ThepHuck

VMware Site Recovery Manager 5.1 Connection & Session Limits – Updated

SRM Connection or Session Limit Reached
Scroll down for the Update

Keep reading for the fix!

VMware Site Recovery Manager & Active Directory – Part 2 – Domain Controllers in test environment

VMware Site Recovery Manager & Active Directory – Part 1 – Testing Recovery Plans with Active Directory

To include Active Directory or not to include Active Directory, that is the question.

Testing vs Planned vs Unplanned

This post will cover testing only. I’ll write a follow-up covering planned & unplanned failovers later.

How often should I conduct a disaster recovery test? – TechTarget.com contribution

Site Recovery Manager 5.1 installation fails connecting to database – dbmanager could not initialize vdb connection

SCCM 2007 will not auto apply drivers to newer hardware

The Problem

The Solution

Added VMware’s PowerCLI cmdlets to the powershell.php for WP-Syntax & GeSHi

vMotion fails at 10% with error 0xbad010d on VMware ESXi

How to disable driver signing requirement in Windows 8

Scripting it old school! Bash shell script to apply ESX 3.5 Update 5a

SRM Connection or Session Limit Reached ***Scroll down for the Update***

Keep reading for the fix!

To include Active Directory or not to include Active Directory, that is the question.

Testing vs Planned vs Unplanned

This post will cover testing only. I’ll write a follow-up covering planned & unplanned failovers later.

The Problem

The Solution

SRM Connection or Session Limit Reached
Scroll down for the Update