Hi Lisa and others. I found the following item in the Microsoft knowledgebase (furnished by Dell technical assistance):
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/823206 Microsoft changed the way devices are referenced AT OPERATING SYSTEM INSTALLATION--affects both OS upgrade and OS fresh install. Seems devices (such as NICs) are added to 'inventory' in the sequence they respond--which can be one gate responding, literally, one memory cycle ahead of the other. First Response will be labelled as NIC #1, whether that is hardware #1 with lowest MAC address or not. Note: SOME UNNAMED hardware manufacturers complicate the situation somewhat as NICs are installed as two NICs per UART chip (sorry, that is universal asynchronous receive-transmit--too many years in engineering), and are only controllable at the CHIP level, not by individual NIC (for BIOS purposes). So one cannot disable all but one NIC at OS install time--then re-enable others later--to guarantee a particular MAC address for the platform. One could do the one-NIC-only enable wherever the BIOS allows that granularity of control--initial installation with one NIC only, then enable/add the others later. Therefore, the random-MAC address game is in play! Don W. McClure, P.E. CITC Call Tracking Administration University of North Texas dwmac @ unt . edu -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Kemes, Lisa Sent: Monday, December 13, 2010 4:56 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: ARS 7.6.03 Licensing on Windows Server 2008 R2 So this only happens with an UPGRADE from 2003 to 2008 correct? We are installing on a fresh server with 2008....(Windows) Lisa -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of strauss Sent: Monday, December 13, 2010 5:29 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: ARS 7.6.03 Licensing on Windows Server 2008 R2 I started out testing 7.5 on 2008 R2 and there just seemed to be too many random permissions issues with the ARS and applications installers. I don't think they were designed to run on 2008 and they worked better on 2003. The 7.5 licensing problem, however, was completely different and fixable as I recall. The support tech working my issue now is the same one I reported the problem with 7.5 to, something like a year ago. Anyway, I reverted the servers to 2003 and had far less problems, and then upgraded ARS/ITSM when 7.6.03 came out but remained on 2003 (always Enterprise x64 - some were R2 in my server group tests). Since the 7.6.03 Stack Installer came out exclusively for 2008 R2, I _assumed_ that 7.6.03 had been developed and tested on 2008 R2, not 2003, and that it would be safe to move the servers to 2008 R2 (the SQL Server has remained on 2008 throughout all of this). Either I was mistaken, or the problem I am seeing is unique to Dell hardware (all previous and current production is on HP servers) and only under 2008 R2, not 2003. I figure that there will be a lot of finger pointing (Dell versus Microsoft versus BMC) as to who the real culprit is here, so 'since ARS 7.6.03 does not properly support 2008 R2' may be too broad a statement; you may have no problem at all on different hardware, especially if Windows has identified the NICs in the same order as the BIOS. I do have one 2008 R2 server where that did happen, and the snmp.exe utility used by ARS 7.6.03 appears to select the correct NIC, but of course that was the box I had spec'd out for mid-tier, not one of the ARS servers... they are both wrong. Again, you may be fine, but this looks like a mouse trap where you could install and license 7.6.03 on a 2003 server, and if you upgraded the server OS later to 2008 R2 (something I NEVER do - I build them fresh every time) the license could conceivably stop working without any other factor changing. That is basically what has happened to me, although the ARS is a new install of exactly the same distribution on the same machine, with ONLY the OS changing. Christopher Strauss, Ph.D. Call Tracking Administration Manager University of North Texas Computing & IT Center http://itsm.unt.edu/ -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of LJ LongWing Sent: Monday, December 13, 2010 4:04 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: ARS 7.6.03 Licensing on Windows Server 2008 R2 Christopher, I'm going to take a small piece of what you just said and ask you to elaborate on it 'since ARS 7.6.03 does not properly support 2008 R2' What's not supported?...and should I avoid going to 2008 R2 on 7.5 as well? -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of strauss Sent: Monday, December 13, 2010 2:50 PM To: [email protected] Subject: ARS 7.6.03 Licensing on Windows Server 2008 R2 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" _______________________________________________________________________________ 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" _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org attend wwrug11 www.wwrug.com ARSList: "Where the Answers Are"
