Domain Controller Down (VM)
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@scottalanmiller I'm not thinking very clearly right now. Very high stress situation. I have a DC running in a VM. The VM itself is down. vsphere is reporting that it is inaccessible and I cannot power it on.
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@wirestyle22 said in Domain Down:
.... In vsphere the domain is greyed out and says inaccessible. This is a Windows Server 2003 domain which I wanted to transfer over anyway, so my plan is to promote the 2008 domain to have the FSMO roles, then delete the old domain and create a new one in Windows Server 2012....
See all the times that you are using the term domain to mean a server? A domain is never a server. It's a software grouping construct. Very different than a server or a VM.
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@wirestyle22 said in Domain Down:
@scottalanmiller I'm not thinking very clearly right now. Very high stress situation. I have a DC running in a VM. The VM itself is down. vsphere is reporting that it is inaccessible and I cannot power it on.
Okay, then let's ignore all of the unnecessary stuff and focus on the problem. What is the problem... the server is down. So let's bring it up. What's the log error?
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@scottalanmiller Understood. How do I resolve my issue though? I need to transfer FSMO roles to the new domain that is accessible
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@wirestyle22 said in Domain Down:
@scottalanmiller Understood. How do I resolve my issue though? I need to transfer FSMO roles to the new domain that is accessible
Bring up the server that is down. Why are we not looking at that first? Why are we worried about FSMO roles right now?
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@scottalanmiller I do not know how to bring up that server. I cannot power it on. Novice to VM's and hypervisors here
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@scottalanmiller The events are completely clear showing nothing currently.
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@coliver @Dashrender @dafyre Any help would be appreciated guys. Thanks
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Sorry, I've not worked with VMWare for quite awhile. Check under /var/log directory for any logs that might shed light on what is going on with your VM.
/var/log/vmware/hostd.log
/var/log/messages
...See if you can find the logs specific to that VM as well.
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Do you have anything like Nagios or Zabbix in place monitoring your systems? Any aggregate log servers/services in place?
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Locating a hosted VM's files: https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1003880
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@RamblingBiped No. I just started here not too long ago and was trying to resolve many issues that I saw initially. Obviously not fast enough though.
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@wirestyle22 said in Domain Controller Down (VM):
@RamblingBiped No. I just started here not too long ago and was trying to resolve many issues that I saw initially. Obviously not fast enough though.
So is the domain down (only one domain controller) or is the domain itself still up? What is the urgency here? Is there impact at this point, or just a VM that should be fixed?
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I have not had an active VMWare setup for over 2 years now, so i cannot help with details.
But if the console will not let it turn on, usually something is not found.
Browse the datastore manually and see if all the files exist
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VMware says...
This issue occurs when:
- Permissions are not set correctly.
- There are virtual machine tasks running in the background.
- The .vmx file is corrupted.
- There are invalid arguments in the .vmx file.
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Permissions are not set correctly
To troubleshoot this issue:
- Ensure there are sufficient permissions on the virtual machine. In vSphere Client, select the virtual machine. Click the Permission tab. Ensure that sufficient permissions are applied to the user/group.
- If permissions are defined at a host, cluster, datacenter or vCenter level, apply the required permissions to the user or group to edit the virtual machine settings.
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@scottalanmiller said in Domain Controller Down (VM):
@wirestyle22 said in Domain Controller Down (VM):
@RamblingBiped No. I just started here not too long ago and was trying to resolve many issues that I saw initially. Obviously not fast enough though.
So is the domain down (only one domain controller) or is the domain itself still up? What is the urgency here? Is there impact at this point, or just a VM that should be fixed?
I'm assuming that there are other roles on here that he has not mentioned.
Because if it was only as DC, the FSMO roles mean nothing to clients in general day to day work.
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@scottalanmiller said in Domain Controller Down (VM):
@wirestyle22 said in Domain Controller Down (VM):
@RamblingBiped No. I just started here not too long ago and was trying to resolve many issues that I saw initially. Obviously not fast enough though.
So is the domain down (only one domain controller) or is the domain itself still up? What is the urgency here? Is there impact at this point, or just a VM that should be fixed?
He has a second DC on the network. It is a Server 2008 based setup according to his first post.
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I don't actually know how to fix this issue and am very stressed. Typing quickly as a result so please try to bear with me. A user called me and said she thought we had an internet outage. I checked my hypervisor and saw that the DC (2003) was greyed out and inaccessible. I'm assuming we must have had a domain syncing problem before this occurred, otherwise the other domain should have picked everything up as it is round robin. I attempted to disconnect my PC from the domain and reconnect. It claims there are no active directory controllers found.
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Generally when you see issues like this it's because the vmdk is corrupt or not on the drive. In the VMWare console check the datastore and see if the vmdk is listed.
Either way generally the best bet is restore from backup.
