Category Archives: Windows Server 2016

The Federation Service was unable to create the federation metadata document as a result of an error.Document Path: /FederationMetadata/2007-06/FederationMetadata.xml

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While working on upgrading a Windows 2012 R2 ADFS Farm to Window Server 2016 I noticed the worried looks of the systems administrators while looking at a warning in the ADFS event log, which they wanted to trouble shoot. I knew they had a hardware load balancer in place which made me 99.999% sure it wasn’t a real issue. You see, early documentation on configuring load balancing for and ADFS farm was often configured with a health check for the following url: /FederationMetadata/2007-06/FederationMetadata.xml. This leads you to an XML file that should be available on a working ADFS node.

This works fine. The Kemp Loadmaster knows the ADFS nodes are functional or not and can do it’s job. There’s a nagging issue however. The ADFS log on the ADFS farm node keep logging every health check with a warning

Event ID 143 AD FS

The Federation Service was unable to create the federation metadata document as a result of an error.Document Path: /FederationMetadata/2007-06/FederationMetadata.xml

Additional Data
Exception details:
System.Net.HttpListenerException (0x80004005): The specified network name is no longer available at System.Net.HttpResponseStream.Write(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size) at Microsoft.IdentityServer.Service.FederationMetadata.SamlMetadataListener.OnGetContext(IAsyncResult result)

As you cans see it just fills the logs every 9 seconds (the frequency of the health check).

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This leads to hunting for a “ghost” issue that’s actually only an artefact of checking for .

Kemp has updated their documentation with 2 other values for the health check url to use. The good news is these don’t cause the above artefact of logging warning to the ADFS event log. These 2 options are:

  • /adfs/services/trust/mex

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This leads to an XML file as well but it doesn’t cause the warning to be logged.

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  • /adfs/ls/idpInitiatedSignon.aspx.

This leads to the ADFS login page which also doesn’t cause a warning to be logged.

So by changing your health check to any of the  above you get a functional health check for your nodes and you don’t have the phantom warning entries in the ADFS event log. That’s a lot better and at least doesn’t cause any unneeded concerns by the initiated accidental ADFS administrator.

Testing Compellent Replay Manager 7.8

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Testing Compellent Replay Manager 7.8

So today I found the Replay Manager 7.8 bits to download.image

As is was awaiting this eagerly (see Off Host Backup Jobs with Veeam and Replay Manager 7.8). So naturally, I set of my day by testing Compellent Replay Manager 7.8. I deployed in on a 2 node DELL PowerEdge Cluster with FC access to a secondary DELL Compellent running SC 6.7.30 (you need to be on 6.7).

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The first thing I noticed is the new icon.

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That test cluster is running Windows Server 2016 Datacenter edition and is fully patched. The functionality is much the same as it was. There is one difference and that if you launch the back upset manually of a local volume for a CSV and that CSV is not owned y the Node in which you launch it the backup is blocked.

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This did not use to be the case. With scheduled backup sets this is not an issue, it detects the owner of the CSV and uses that.

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Just remember when running a backup manually you nee to launch it from the CSV owner node in Replay Manager and all is fine.

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Other than that testing has been smooth and naturally we’ll be leveraging RM 7.8 with transportable snapshots with Veeam B&R 9.5 as well.

Things to note

Replay Manager 7.8 is not backward compatible with 7.7.1 or lower so you have to have the same version on your Replay Manager management server as on the hosts you want to protect. You also have to be running SC 6.7 or higher.

Wish list

I’d love to see Replay manager become more intelligent and handle VM Mobility better. The fact that VMs are tied to the node on which the backup set is create is really not compatible with the mobility of VMs (maintenance, dynamic optimization, CSV balancing, …). A little time and effort here would go a long way.

Second. Live Volumes has gotten a lot better but we still need to choose between Replay Manager  snapshots & Live Volumes. In an ideal world that would not be the case and Replay manager would have the ability to handle this dynamically. A big ask perhaps, but it would be swell.

I just keep giving the feedback as I’m convinced this is a great SAN for Hyper-V environments and they could beat anyone by make a few more improvements.

DELL EMC Ready Nodes and Storage Spaces Direct

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Introduction

Unless you have been living under a rock you must have heard about Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) in Windows Server 2016, which has gone RTM in Q4 2016.

There is a lot of enthusiasm for S2D and we have seen heard and assisted in early adopter situations. But that’s a bit of pioneering with OEM/MSFT approved components. So now bring in the DELL EMC Ready Nodes and Storage Spaces Direct.

DELL EMC Storage Spaces Direct Ready Nodes

So enter the DELL EMC ready nodes. These will be available this summer and should help less adventurous but interested customers get on the S2D bandwagon. These were announced at DELL EMC world 2017 and on may 30th they published some information on the TechCenter.

If offers a fully OEM supported S2D solution to the customers that cannot or will not carry the engineering effort associated with self built solution.

I was sort of hoping these would leverage the PowerEdge 740DX from the start but they seem to have opted to begin with the DELL 730DX. I’m pretty sure the R740DX will follow soon as it’s a perfect fit for the use case having 25Gbps support. In that respect I expect a refresh of the switches offered as well as the S4048 is a great switch but keeps us at 10Gbps. If I was calling the shots I’d that ready and done sooner rather than later as the 25/50/100Gbps network era is upon us. There’s a reason I’ve been asking for 25Gpbs capable switches with smaller port counts for SME.

Maybe this is an indication of where they think this offering will sell best. But I’d be considering future deployments when evaluating network gear purchases. These have a long service time. And when S2D proves it self I’m sure the size of the deployments will grow and with it the need for more bandwidth. Mind you 10Gbps isn’t bad even if if, for Hyper-V nodes would be doing 2*dual port Mellanox Connect-X 3 Pro cards.

Having mentioned them, I am very happy to see the Mellanox RoCE cards in there.That’s the best choice they could have made. The 1Gbps on board NICs are Intel, which matches my preference. The game is a foot!

Off Host Backup Jobs with Veeam and Replay Manager 7.8

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It’s all about application consistent hardware VSS provider snapshots

I was browsing to see if I could already download Replay Manager 7.8 for our Compellent (SC) SANs. No luck yet, but I did find the release notes. There was a real gem in there on Off Host Backup Jobs with Veeam and Replay Manager 7.8. We’ll get back to that after the big deal here.

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So what kind of goodness is in there? Well obviously there is the way too long overdue support for Windows Server 2016, including the Hyper-V role and its features. That is great news. We now have application consistent hardware VSS provider snapshots.I do not know what took them so long but they need to get with the program here. I have given this a s feedback before and again at DELL EMC World 2017 The Compellent still is one of the best “traditional” centralized storage SAN solutions out there hat punches fare above its weight. On top of that, having looked at Unity form DELL EMC, I can tell you that in my humble opinion the Compellent has no competition from it.

Off Host Backup Jobs Veeam Replay Manager 7.8

Equally interesting to me, as someone who leverages Compellent and Veeam Baclup & Replication with Off Host Proxies (I wrote FREE WHITE PAPER: Configuring a VEEAM Off Host Backup Proxy Server for backing up a Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V cluster with a DELL Compellent SAN (Fiber Channel))  is the following. Under fixed Issues is found:

RMS-24 Off-host backup jobs might fail during the volume discover scan when using Veeam backup software.

I have Off host proxies with transportable snapshots working pretty smooth but it has the occasional hiccup. Maybe some of those will disappear with Replay Manager 7.8. I’m looking forward to putting that to the test and roll forward with Windows Server 2016 for those nodes where we need and want to leverage the Compellent Hardware VSS provider. When I do I’ll let you know the results.