Tag Archives: Cluster Validation

KB2616676 Patching Hiccup Discovered by Out of Sync Cluster Nodes

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I was investigating an issue on a Windows 2008 R2 SP1 cluster and as part of my check list I ran the cluster validation. Than came out clean but for the fact that it complained about an update that was missing on some of the nodes.

That update was Microsoft Security Advisory: Fraudulent digital certificates could allow spoofing or KB2607712 Not that these cluster nodes are web clients but this is not good and we need to have this fixed for both security & cluster supportability reasons.

But neither WSUS or Windows Update indicate that there is an update available for these nodes. So I download the patch manually and try to install it. Then I get the response: ‘This update is not applicable to your computer’

No good! Now we need to find out what’s up. After some searching we find other people with this issue in the Microsoft forums: KB2607712 does not download to clients.

As it turns out KB2607712 was erroneously marked as superseded by KB2616676. This means that if that update is approved, or installed, the download/installation of KB2607712 is blocked. I check this on the nodes involved and this is indeed the case.

No please now that the forum reply states “erroneously marked as superseded” which means that BOTH updates are needed. The work around is to:

  • uninstall/unapprove KB2616676
  • install/approve KB2607712
  • reinstall/approve  KB2616676  again after you clients/host have KB2607712 installed.

There should be a revision of KB2616676 coming in the future that’s to include of KB2607712, meaning that KB2607712 will truly be supersede by it. As of this writing that revised version is not released yet so you’re left with the workaround until now.

Piece of advice. Keep your cluster nodes patched but do it in a well organized matter so they remain in sync.  Don’t just do half of the nodes. The good thing that came out of this that we discovered that some other servers/clients did not get the update for KB2607712 due to this. So now the company can address this issue using the workaround. I did the manual uninstall/reinstall workaround for the cluster nodes. For their clients an other servers  I suggested they’d go the WSUS way.

Cluster Validation Bug In Windows 2008 R2 SP1 – Disk has a Persistent Reservation on it

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Pretty soon after the RTM of Windows 2008 R2 SP1 release we were discussing a bug on the TechNet forum (Hyper-V Cluster issues after applying Win2008 R2 SP1 on a 3 node Cluster!) here. If you have a Windows 2008 R2 SP1 cluster with more than 2 nodes you get the following warning:

List Potential Cluster Disks

Disk with identifier 2sef8cdf has a Persistent Reservation on it. The disk might be part of some other cluster. Removing the disk from validation set

“Normally” you would expect such a warning if the LUN ever belonged to another cluster and it needs the old reservation cleared. To do that you would use following command on the node that throws the warning (where in this example the disk is disk 2 in disk manager/diskpart) and after making sure it is not in use anywhere else in the SAN

"cluster node clusternode1 /clearpr:2"

However this is not the cause here as were most others in this discussion. And I’m pretty no san software or MPIO software is putting a reservation on there either so what is this? A bug? Well yes, it has been confirmed by Microsoft support that is is indeed a bug an that is fix will be made available by April 18th2011 .

This was not a show stopper bug, but it could be one if you needed to add a host to a cluster and confirm all is well and supported. However if you’re certain you’ve done everything right you can choose not to run cluster validation.

I will update this blog with more information when the fix becomes available.

UPDATE:  The hotfix has become available today, April 26th 2011 as announced on the TechNet forum here:

A hotfix is now available that addresses the Win2008 R2 service pack 1 issue with Validate on a 3+ node cluster.  This is KB 2531907.  The KB article and download link will be published shortly, in the mean time you can obtain this hotfix immediately free of charge by calling Microsoft support and referencing KB 2531907. Update 27/05/2011 Here is the link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2531907/en-us?sd=rss&spid=14134