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Problem BESR 2010 ( 8.5 ) with XenServer 5.6 ( XenTools )

A-H-S
Level 3
Partner
We got massive Problems with the new Xentools 5.6 und BESR. After Installation of the Xentools 5.6 the SystemGui hangs ( for about 2 min
you cannot do anything, then the System reacts for 1-2 sec.). If you stop the BESR services or go back to the 5.5 Version of the Xentools,
everything is working fine again. We can reproduce the error on SBS 2003, 2008, WinXP...
I open a thread here and on the Xenside, because i don't know who is guilty. All I know is, that we need a solution for this problem,
because we have many combinations of Xen/BESR on customers side.

Regards
Achim Heisler
44 REPLIES 44

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

Unfortunately I have some bad news for everyone on this issue..

XenServer 5.6 was incorrectly added to the SCL. XenServer 5.6 is not currently supported with BESR 2010 and will be removed from the SCL shortly. The workaround already discussed will need to be used until such time that BESR has been fully tested/certified with XenServer 5.6.

Apologies for the confusion.

A-H-S
Level 3
Partner
Hello Chris,

thank You for the information, but I don't have to belive in that story... So you will tell me that it is a random function to bring a product on the symantec SCL? I hope You'll use the time and check you QM before the next "mistake". That's not the way I expact the way of a solutionfinding.

But thanks for your personal effort in that case.

Regards
Achim

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

Achim,

I don't understand how it happened because I'm not personally involved in updating the SCL. All I can tell you is that it was placed there in error.

Chris

Martijn_Hoogenb
Level 3

Chris, that is verrrrrry misfortunate, we already have installed XenServer 5.6 at a bunch of our customers wich are now running with the tools from 5.5.

Have you got any idea on which timeframe there will be more information about this case? We already have sold BESR2010 and installed the hardware.

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

Martijn; sorry, but I cannot give you any timeframe at this stage.

Otwdiver
Not applicable
Partner
I was on the phone with them for about 3 hours and at the time no one had heard of this. I had a test environment and we did a lot of testing and found that it effects all windows server installed on Xenserver 5.6. here is the Symantec Case # 412429651

porch_
Not applicable
Hi Chris,

I also have this issue across multiple customers running XenServer 5.6 and BESR 2010/8.5. To make things worse this combination has also been proposed to numerous customers in relation to new projects which we are now going to have to re architect.

I have been working with Citrix Engineering for several weeks trying to 100% identify the issue and they came back with the following which is similar to comments above from A-H-S (in XenServer 5.5 the issue did not exist)

'The interactions between scsifilt and xenvbd have been extensively re-worked in 5.6 and our testing does not cover drivers that break the Windows layering model and open PDOs directly. If the symantec software obeyed the rules then there would not be a problem'

The workaround detailed above by A-H-S was also suggested to me by Citrix Support. When I asked Citrix what if any potential issues were possible with the workaround they made the below comments:

'The workaround should be safe, but is relatively untested. The xenvbd datapaths are normally only used during crashdump or hibernate. We try to keep them available for eventualities such as this but they are not tested in this scenario.
The workaround will have a performance impact and this may be noticeable depending on the workload'


It is concerning that I am still able to view the SCL publicly which contains information that states BESR is supported on XenServer 5.6.

Unfortunately I don't have the luxury of choosing a different imaging product as a lot of my customers have a decent investment in BESR technologies dating back to the Livestate days. I understand that this is not going to be an overnight fix from Symantec as it appears that the problem is quite significant. What I would request is that where possible Symantec acknowledges the issue and provides their customers with an accurate expectation of when this is likely to be rectified.

cheers,
porch

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited
porch,

The SCL has already been updated (XenServer 5.6 has been removed). This new version has not been published externally yet as we are currently making some changes to our knowledgebase system. Expect to see the new SCL soon (sorry, I cannot give you a timeframe at this point).

This issue has already been escalated internally and will be looked at for future versions of BESR. Again, I am unable to give you any timeframes at this point.

A-H-S
Level 3
Partner
Hello,

I have written an article in a German it-magazine to summarize my experience in that case:

http://www.it-business.de/news/dienstleister/unternehmensmeldungen/unternehmensstrategien/articles...


Regards
Achim

cgracie
Not applicable
Partner Accredited
I am not sure about this, but it seems I cannot do live migrations of guests running under Xenserver after I have implemented the 'scsifilt' registry hack mentioned above. Xenserver will let me do the migration, but once the system finishes the migration, it is totally hung and using 100% CPU. Have to force it off.

Symantec - please do what it takes to fix this issue. We have a lot of servers running on Xenserver and it would be ashame if we had to abandon BESR due to compatibility issues.

A-H-S
Level 3
Partner
Hello cgarcie,

I've checked it out on one of out testsystems ( win7 64 bit ), but cannot confirm the error. I deleted the registry key, then I
restarted the system. Then I did a live migration and everything was running fine. And until now we have no feedback from
other systems with a problem like this.

klucks83
Not applicable


We have about 50 VMs total running on xenserver 5.6 with BESR 2010.  I have ran into this problem twice now, with the VM's (server2003) resources being maxed out at 100% and the VM becoming EXTREMELY sluggish.  I applied the reghack to both servers and it looks like it took care of the issue.  So far so good!

Hopefully Symantec fixes this soon so that I don't run into it with any more servers.

Jamie_Malone
Level 2

I had experienced the exact server hanging issue described above and decided to v2p SBS2008 to other hardware.

After numerous test BESR restores of SBS2008 to a fresh install of XenServer 5.6 back onto the original hardware, it would hang at the mini-setup phase and fail to initalise.

I have since installed XenServer 5.0 and restored SBS2008 sucessfully. BESR 2010 now specifies in the SCL that it only compatible with XenServer 5.0 at this time.

This is just to clarify what setup works, unfortunatly I learned the hard way but hopefully others will avoid this problem. I don't trust the reghack workaround for 5.6, (and would like to avoid the "performance issues" stated by porch) and as 5.5 is not explicitly stated in the SCL, I would stick with 5.0 if you are using BESR 2010.

Good luck with your installations, I've had enough bad luck with mine.

 

 

Tim_Frodermann
Level 3
Partner Accredited

Hi all,

as I just had to discover, the above discussed problem still exists in BESR 2010 Version 9.0.2.37914 and about 5 Months later to the day since first posted here.

Any Updates on this, Symantec?

 

Regards,

Tim

 

 

Seb_Web
Level 2
Partner

Hi all,

 

same question here - any new solution available?

 

Greetz

Seb

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

XenServer/XenTools version 5.6 is still not currently supported with BESR. Support for this version is coming but I don't know what that timeframe will be.

In the meantime, the following documents the workaround available:

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH137885

JPapp
Level 2

I'm having the same problem with live migrations.

I have two VMs running 2008 R2 and BESR 2010. Both of these VMs hang at 100% memory and then later 100% CPU after a live migration.

I'm also having other problems with backup job hanging half way through, usually with the BESR service locked at 100% CPU. At the moment BESR 2010 seems totally unworkable for me.

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

See below...

Martijn_Hoogenb
Level 3

I dont know if it is persistent, but i've upgraded our datacenter to 5.6 with FP1 today (was still at 5.5 U2) and the slow response was gone.

We decided to apply the registerkey to the systems which are using BESR 2010, so on the first VM I installed the new tools and told the customer it would take atleast up to one hour for everything to work.

But suprise suprise, it just worked. Everything was fine and de VM was as responsive as ever.

Can anyone confirm this? I don't have any other customers where I can just upgrade the host machines.

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

Thanks for the update, Martijn. I assume 'FP1' is a 'patch' (or similar) for XenTools??

It would be good if someone else could also verify this as a possible solution.