Matraex, Inc Blog

When installing a Protection Agent from DPM 2007 on a server on a Windows 2003 Domain I ran into a wacky problem where the DPM Administration Console errored out during Install.

A server errored out with a 337 error.

You cannot install the protection agent on MYSERVER because access to the computer has been denied.

The Microsoft Documentation says that the recommended action is “Do the following to troubleshoot this issue: ”

1) If another DPM server is currently protecting MYSERVER use that DPM server to uninstall the protection agent from MYSERVER. Then, use this DPM server to install the protection agent on MYSERVER.

2) Verify that the time on the DPM server and the selected computer is synchronized with the domain controller. At a command prompt, type “net time /set” to synchronize the time with the domain controller.

3) If the computer is a domain controller, verify that the primary domain controller (the PDC Emulator) is running Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 (SP1), and that Active Directory has completed replication between the domain controllers since the Windows Server 2003 SP1 installation.

So I start debugging with item 1.  Since I am not the first Administrator to work on this installation AND there is another DPM server located elsewhere on the network which was recenctly installed,  it seems possible that something odd was done with this computer wpointed to another DPM Server.

First I try uninstalling the client locally on the system and I log into the server to remove the program using Add/Remove Programs,  however the Add/Remove Programs listing is completely blank.  I do a bunch of research on this and eventually  I determine that the Unistall information must somehow be corrupt,  the system needs a OS restore or something.  I cant afford this and will plan to do this another day.   I start browsing around in the Program Files directory for the DPM Client to try and find an uninstall program or something and I happen upon an executable that looks interesting.  I open a command prompt and run the program to find out what it does.

#> cd C:\Program Files\Microsoft Data Protection Manager\DPM\bin
#> setDPMServer.exe /?

This shows me how to run this program

#> SetDPMServer -dpmservername < servername>

So I run it with the name of my DPM server

#> SetDPMServer -dpmservername MYSERVER

And it clearly does something giving me the following information.

Configuring dpm server settings and firewall settings for dpm server =[MYSERVER]
Configuring dpm server settings and firewall settings for dpm server =[W2K.DOMAIN.COM\MYSERVER]
Configuration completed successfully!!!

Now I head back over to my DPM server and run the install again from the Management Tab of the DPM 2007 Administrator Console.  And would you beleive it?  It installed perfectly.  So there are two things I need to get in order to address the other issues on my network (find out why Add / Remove Programs is not coming up,  find out if anyone is trying to protect some of the computers using another DPM server on the network). 
The thing I never found out was if it could have been items 2 or 3 where there is a time sync problem between the AD controller and the server.  It might have been better to start with the easy fixes described in those steps since that would have been easier and would have ruled it in our out.

Until then though this will work; Mystery Solved!

When installing an Protection Agent from DPM 2007 on a server on a Windows 2003 Domain I ran into a wacky problem.

A server errored out with a 307 error.

The protection agent operation failed because DPM detected an unknown DPM protection agent on MYSERVER.

The Microsoft Documentation says that the recommended action is to:

Use Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel to uninstall the protection agent from MYSERVER, then reinstall the protection agent and perform the operation again.

So I log into the server to remove the program using Add/Remove Programs,  however the Add/Remove Programs listing is completely blank.  I do a bunch of research on this and eventually  I determine that the Unistall information must somehow be corrupt,  the system needs a OS restore or something.  I cant afford this and will plan to do this another day.  In the mean time I need to get this program uninstalled so I can reinstall the DPM Agent on this server.

I couldn’t find an MSI or anything to use to uninstall it but I found a post describing where in the registry to find uninstall program locations is for certain programs. 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Window\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

Well,  there is supposed to be an entry  here for each of the programs that are installed on your system,  but there was not one for the DPM agent,  I did find all sorts of UID type entries and I looked through them and low and behold, I found an entry for Microsoft System Center DPM Protection Agent (the name of the agent was in the ‘DisplayName’ string key)  I then copied the string in the ‘UninstallString’ key

MsiExec.exe /I{D58FCD22-5818-412B-93C3-D03CF3D6A2CE}
Note: do not run this on your system,  the UID above should coorespond to your system

pasted it into a command prompt window and it then ran the uninstall program for “Microsoft System Center DPM Protection Agent”  and prompted for a reboot.

I rebooted and the system came back up,  out of curiousity I went back into the reegistry and I could not find the entry in the registry any more.  I am not going to do more investigation into at this point however it makes me think that the items that show in this registry folder with a UID instead of a program name are somehow corrupted even though this one ran okay.    I looked on my  windows XP workstation (which Add/Remove Programs works on) and I have dozens of UID entries in this registry area so I am sure that this is not the cause of the “corrupted” Add/Remove programs issue.

Anyway,  thats it,  the “corrupt” DPM protecion agent was removed and so I was able to rerun the install process from the DPM 2007 Administrator Console again.  It succeeded without issue and now I can backup my server.

This blog describes some basic commands to repair an array in the case of a failed disk on the Dell 1750 running Linux via Dells afacli command line utility.

The actual manual for afacli can be found here:
http://docs.us.dell.com/support/edocs/storage/57kgr/cli/en/index.htm

Accessing the CLI from the UNIX Prompt

To access the CLI from the UNIX prompt, display a window and type afacli in any directory. The system displays the FASTCMD> prompt, which indicates you can now use CLI commands. The path in the startup file (.login or .cshrc) must include the directory where the software is installed for the command to work in any directory. See your UNIX documentation for information on setting up directory paths in the .login and .cshrc files.

To view all controllers use ‘controller list’
To connect to the controller with the command line utility, execute:

FASTCMD> open afa0

AFA0>

To show the status of all disks in all arrays, execute ‘enclosure show status’.

AFA0> enclosure show status

Executing: enclosure show status

Enclosure
ID (B:ID:L) UpTime D:H:M   PowerCycle Interval Door     Alarm
———– ————– ———- ——– ——– —–
0  0:06:0         0:00:00        0       10   UNKNOWN  OFF

Enclosure
ID (B:ID:L) Fan Status
———– — ————-
0  0:06:0   0   OK
0  0:06:0   1   OK
0  0:06:0   2   OK

Enclosure
ID (B:ID:L) Power State        Status
———– —– ———— ——-

Enclosure
ID (B:ID:L) Slot scsiId Insert  Status
———– —- —— ——- ——————————————
0  0:06:0   0   0:00:0     0   OK ACTIVATE
0  0:06:0   1   0:01:0     0   OK ACTIVATE
0  0:06:0   2   0:02:0     0   ERROR FAILED CRITICAL WARNING ACTIVATE
0  0:06:0   3   0:03:0     0   ERROR FAILED CRITICAL WARNING ACTIVATE
0  0:06:0   4   0:04:0     0   ERROR FAILED CRITICAL WARNING ACTIVATE
0  0:06:0   5   0:05:0     0   ERROR FAULTY FAILED CRITICAL WARNING ACTIVATE

Enclosure
ID (B:ID:L) Sensor Temperature Threshold Status
———– —— ———– ——— ——–
0  0:06:0   0       82 F         120    NORMAL
0  0:06:0   1       86 F         120    NORMAL

Above, the disk in slot 5 is bad, so first de-activate the slot:

AFA0> enclosure prepare slot 0 5

Wait for the lights to go out, then remove the disk. Replace the disk with a functional, identical replacement disk.

Then, activate the slot:

AFA0> enclosure activate slot 0 5

Now, wait for the disk to rebuild. You can view the rebuild process with ‘task list’.

AFA0> task list
Executing: task list

Controller Tasks

TaskId Function  Done%  Container State Specific1 Specific2
—— ——– ——- ——— —– ——— ———
101   Rebuild   0.7%      1      RUN   00000000  00000000

The disk may be ready for use once this is complete however if it’s not try the command ‘disk initialize’

disk initialize

To initialize a SCSI disk for use with the currently opened controller, use the disk initialize command. This command writes data structures to the disk so that the controller can use the disk.

HINT: If you need to actually see which disk to pull out of the server ‘disk blink’ causes the disk drive light to blink.