Chris, I ran across something that I dismissed as "silly" that I think might be related....
I am setting up a new 2008 VM to try out the new 7.6.3 stack installer. After installing the OS I copied over bginfo, a nifty MS internals utility that prints host info on the desktop. It really helps when managing multiple machines to know at a glance what machine you are connected to and basic system info like disk usage, patch level, installed memory, etc. Well, guess what it did for the network info... Instead of listing the one IP address, it listed ALL the network nodes, including the disabled ones. I got a list that looked something like: <none> <none> <none> 192.1.1.1 <none> <none> After some investigation, I discovered thet the values are fed by a WMI query that queries IP addresses. Previous to 2008, this query returned only the active addresses/NICs, but starting with 2008 that query now returns everything. Fixing this for bginfo turned out to be easy enough -- I created a new item and added the WMI query with a qualification that returns only active records. I noticed that my active NIC was not the first in the list, so I'm thinking that I might come across the same problem you did when I go to license the server. I will report my results when I get there. Juan ingles On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 1:49 PM, strauss <[email protected]> wrote: > Just a heads up for anyone out there contemplating moving their OS from 2003 > to 2008 to host a 7.6.03 AR Server. You may not be able to license the > server on 2008 R2 due to an error in the snmp.exe program that ARS uses to > "locate" the active NIC and MAC address for licensing. This is on Dell (ack) > servers and may not apply to other hardware, but on ANY hardware our practice > has been to locate the NIC #1 in the BIOS (of the 4 built in NICs - and that > would also be the first MAC address in hex order) and register that MAC > address in DNS and generate our ARS Server license key for that address. > Note that Windows 2003 and 2008 don't always name the #1 NIC in the BIOS as > the Lan#1 or the Adapter #1 - we have examples of NIC#1 being called LAN1 and > Adapter1 by the OS, and others where it is LAN2 and Adapter2, and LAN3 and > Adapter4; the latter two servers WERE supposed to become a licensed server > group! It should not matter - we DISABLE all other NICs in the OS. Running > ipconfig /all displays ONLY the NIC that we have set as active. BTW, > disabling the NIC at the hardware level does not help, and on a *&^%$ Dell > you can only disable them in pairs, and the error appears to occur within the > first pair anyway. > > When the machines are Windows Server 2003, the snmp.exe runs and displays > ONLY the ACTIVE NIC, no matter what the OS has named it. There had never > been a problem with licensing in 7.6.03 on Win 2003 during months of testing > (you may recall that in 7.5 it was generating a random number and displaying > it in the Licensing form, and you had to ignore it and use the MAC address > from ipconfig /all). When we reinstalled the OS as 2008 R2, the same 7.6.03 > snmp.exe now displays a whole slew of entries, and the first NIC entry listed > is taken as the MAC address to be used for licensing; in 4 out of 5 servers, > that is NOT NIC#1, and therefore is NOT the MAC address we registered in DNS, > nor the one we generated ARS licenses for, nor the LAN connection that is > active for the server. Support is just now starting to understand that there > is a problem, so I have no idea what the resolution will be. Until then I am > completely stalled (again); options are to go back to Windows Server 2003 > since ARS 7.6.03 does not properly support 2008 R2; license the server > against the NIC 7.6.03 wants to use, even though it is NOT the NIC the server > uses for DNS and to connect to the network (bound to break some other BMC > component), or completely re-work the server's registration in DNS, AD, etc. > with whatever random MAC that ARS 7.6.03 is "selecting" with the snmp.exe > utility even though it would NOT be the #1 NIC on the hardware.. in the BIOS. > > It's always something silly, isn't it? > > Christopher Strauss, Ph.D. > Call Tracking Administration Manager > University of North Texas Computing & IT Center > http://itsm.unt.edu/ > > _______________________________________________________________________________ > UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org > attend wwrug11 www.wwrug.com ARSList: "Where the Answers Are" > _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org attend wwrug11 www.wwrug.com ARSList: "Where the Answers Are"
