Comments on: vSphere Upgrade Breaks Active Directory

By: Joshua Townsend

Joshua Townsend — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 15:40:45 +0000

Vince – Thanks for posting your solution for working with ghost NIC issues in Windows Server Core! I appreciate you taking the time to share.

Josh

By: Virtualization Adapted » Archive » vmxnet3 – features and use information – tips and tricks

Thu, 27 May 2010 13:54:19 +0000

[...] Reference: http://vmtoday.com/2009/11/vsphere-upgrade-breaks-active-directory/ [...]

By: Vince

Vince — Mon, 17 May 2010 20:02:19 +0000

Nevermind I think I figured it out. Here’s the procedure in case you need it:

1. Copy devcon.exe over to the server core server (I had to extract devcon.exe from \SUPPORT\TOOLS\SUPPORT.CAB on a Windows 2003 R2 x64 disc).

2. Run devcon.exe findall =net (this should list all NICs on the system, including the phantoms). This was my output:

PCI\VEN_15AD&DEV_0720&SUBSYS_072015AD&REV_10\4&B70F118&0&0088: VMware PCI Ethernet Adapter #2
PCI\VEN_15AD&DEV_0720&SUBSYS_072015AD&REV_10\3&18D45AA6&0&88: VMware PCI Ethernet Adapter
PCI\VEN_15AD&DEV_07B0&SUBSYS_07B015AD&REV_01\FF565000EB16A3FE00: vmxnet3 Ethernet Adapter
3 matching device(s) found.

vmxnet3 was the active NIC and the others needed to be removed.

3. devcon -r remove “@PCI\VEN_15AD&DEV_0720&SUBSYS_072015AD&REV_10\3&18D45AA6&0&88″ removed the first one. Repeated for the second unwanted NIC, rebooted the server for good measure and it’s serving up DNS again!

What a pain.

By: Vince

Vince — Mon, 17 May 2010 18:09:56 +0000

So does anyone know how to remove these “phantom” NICs from Windows 2008 Server Core? Can’t run device manager on it, and running it remotely lets you see the phantoms but you can’t remove them because it runs in read-only mode. Until I figure this out I can’t upgrade my domain controllers to hardware v7 because everything breaks

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 19:38:06 +0000

Thanks for the post – I upgraded a bunch of dev/test VMs over the weekend and ran into the WINS setting issue.

Haven’t done any DCs yet, but I do have two that I’ll be upgrading over the coming weeks, so it’s good to see this before it bites me.

I also ran into another hitch. On Server 2008 and 2008 R2 guests, my second virtual disk (for the E: drive) came up offline on the first bootup after the virtual hardware upgrade. This appears to be a default in 2008 when a new disk is detected with an existing volume, since I’ve had it happen with SAN LUNs before too. I had to manually set the disk online in Disk Management for the volume to be mounted.

By: John Z

John Z — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:34:17 +0000

I followed these instructions but DHCP with still not function, get an error when I start/Stop DHCP saying service is not running when it is. Checked to make sure it was bound to proper nic, removed/reinstalled service after reboot, still broken. Any suggestions?

By: Joshua Townsend

Joshua Townsend — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:25:31 +0000

Ricky,

I have not specifically tested 2003 DC’s, but if my memory serves me correctly this is an issue you will have to plan for. Do one DC at a time, fix it, and then go onto the next.

Josh

By: RickyMH

RickyMH — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:22:57 +0000

Does this also apply to 2003 DC’s?

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 01:35:20 +0000

I had this exact same issue on a my vSphere upgrade. I ended up not changing to HW7 quite yet, mostly because the features are not that much needed right now and HW4 works fine.

I noticed this issue seems to be more prevalent in W2K8 upgrades mostly because you need to add the new system value (which I wasnt aware of..thanks!!!).

I will be bookmarking this for future reference when I change my HW to 7 … thanks!!!

By: Tweets that mention vSphere Upgrade Breaks Active Directory | VMtoday -- Topsy.com

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:06:21 +0000

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by VMware Planet V12n, joshuatownsend. joshuatownsend said: New VMtoday.com post: vSphere Upgrade Breaks Active Directory http://cli.gs/PqzZQ #vmware [...]