SCVMM: A few notes on Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and disjointed namespaces

Some of you may not be aware of some of the recent internal changes here in the Manageability support group but we recently picked up responsibility for providing support for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008.  VMM was probably placed here because we're the virtualization experts, or maybe it's because we love anything with 'System Center' in the title, but either way you may find the occasional post on VMM here until it finds a more permanent blog home of it's own.  

To break the ice, so to speak, I thought it might be a good idea to discuss a few notes about using VMM with a disjointed namespace and some of the gotchas you may run into in this kind of environment.

First off, officially VMM 2008 does in fact support a disjointed name space. A disjointed name space occurs when the computer’s primary Domain Name System (DNS) suffix does not match the domain of which it is a member. For more information on disjointed name spaces and naming conventions please see the following article:

909264 - Naming conventions in Active Directory for computers, domains, sites, and OUs

So while VMM 2008 does support a disjointed name space let's consider the following scenarios:

Note: These scenarios assume that VMM 2008 does not reside in a disjointed name space but other systems including the host and P2V source machine do reside in a disjointed name space. For example, the domain is Contoso.com and the SCVMM server resides in Contoso.com but the hosts and P2V (physical to virtual) source machines are in Hosts.Contoso.com.

Scenario 1:
In SCVMM choose to add a host that is “Windows Server-based host on an Active Directory domain” . Enter the name of the server and choose add. You will get the following error.

Hostname.Hosts.Contoso.com cannot be resolve with DNS.

Ensure there is network communication with the DNS server. If the problem persists, contact your network administrator.

ID: 404
Details: No such host is known

To resolve this issue simply check the box “Skip Active Directory name verification” on the Select Host Servers page where the host name is entered. By skipping the verification the host can be successfully added.

Scenario 2:
In SCVMM do a P2V of a physical server by choosing “Convert physical Server”. In the Select Source screen select Browse and find the machine listed as MachineName.Host.Contoso.Com. On the System Information screen select “Scan System”. You will get an error similar to the following.

VMM is unable to complete the request. The connection to the agent MachineName.Host.Contoso.Com was lost.
Ensure that the computer MachineName.Host.Contoso.Com exists on the network, WMI service and the agent are installed and running and that a firewall is not blicking HTTP and WMI traffic.

ID: 3157
Details: The RPC server is unavailable (0x800706BA)

To resolve this issue do not use the Browse button on the Select Source screen. Instead manually enter the machine name in the form of MachineName.Contoso.com.

That's all I can think of for now but if I run into any others I'll be sure to post them here.

J.C. Hornbeck | Manageability Knowledge Engineer

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  FW: SCVMM: A few notes on Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and disjointed namespaces Feed: SMS&MOM Posted

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Thanks, keep the VMM 2008 articles coming!

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Uninstall the P2V agent on the Physical Host that is going to be virtualized.  I had the non R2 agent installed and received this error.  When I removed the agent from the host and ran the P2V wizard again, VMM reinstalled the updated agent and the system scan ran perfectly.

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  thank you