Deployment Errors

[frteles]

Hi Matt,

As mentioned before, we're trying your workshop again and we're facing a lot of deployment errors. All of them with the same message:

{
"status": "Failed",
"error": {
"code": "VMExtensionProvisioningError",
"message": "VM has reported a failure when processing extension 'ConfigureHybridHost'. Error message: "DSC Configuration 'HybridHost' completed with error(s). Following are the first few: WinRM cannot process the request. The following error with errorcode 0x80090350 occurred while using Negotiate authentication: An unknown security error occurred. \r\n Possible causes are:\r\n -The user name or password specified are invalid.\r\n -Kerberos is used when no authentication method and no user name are specified.\r\n -Kerberos accepts domain user names, but not local user names.\r\n -The Service Principal Name (SPN) for the remote computer name and port does not exist.\r\n -The client and remote computers are in different domains and there is no trust between the two domains.\r\n After checking for the above issues, try the following:\r\n -Check the Event Viewer for events related to authentication.\r\n -Change the authentication method; add the destination computer to the WinRM TrustedHosts configuration setting or use HTTPS transport.\r\n Note that computers in the TrustedHosts list might not be authenticated.\r\n -For more information about WinRM configuration, run the following command: winrm help config."\r\n\r\nMore information on troubleshooting is available at https://aka.ms/VMExtensionDSCWindowsTroubleshoot "
}
}

Could you please help us understand why is the error occurring and what can we do to correct it? We're just using your ARM template deployment as is.

Thanks,
Francisco

[frteles]

Feel free to ping me and we can have a look together

[mattmcspirit]

Very strange - nothing has changed with the template or DSC in months, so I'm not sure - I'll have to perform a deployment and take a look. You should be able to RDP into the VM, and execute the DSC manually, and it should give you an idea of what's going wrong: https://github.com/mattmcspirit/hybridworkshop/blob/main/steps/1_DeployAzureVM.md#troubleshooting

[mattmcspirit]

It may be that DSC hits an error, Azure ARM marks things as "Failed" but the deployment happily continues inside the VM - I've seen this occasionally. Handling reboots is tricky from the ARM / DSC side.

[frteles]

I tried to follow that troubleshooting guide:

Tried to re-apply the DSC configuration, all went great and a reboot was done. After that:

[mattmcspirit]

I believe you get that error when a run is still going (which it would have, post-reboot).

I'd leave it for a while, then run:

cd "C:\Packages\Plugins\Microsoft.Powershell.DSC*\DSCWork\hybridhost.0\HybridHost"
Start-DscConfiguration -Path . -Wait -Force -Verbose

Does it run through to a clean completion?

[mattmcspirit]

It may be there are a better set of "manual" DSC commands that will allow better visibility into currently running DSC configurations etc - I'm not an expert on those but will investigate.

[frteles]

I run that before the reboot. So a did a Get-DscConfigurationStatus, did a Start-DscConfiguration (it was rebooted), and a Get-DscConfigurationStatus. And the output was what I shared with you. If I run again the Start command, it runs and creates new recources, but some fail:

If I do another get, this is the outcome:

I can see stuff created (like WAC), but only with one host

So I don't think it did a clean installation

[mattmcspirit]

OK thanks - so Get-DSCConfigurationStatus will always fail with an error is there is a currently running DSC configuration. I'll need to update the docs there.

If deploying the Azure VM returns an error in the portal, i'll document some more accurate steps to check and then re-run the DSC correctly. It may be that the Volume creation has hit a locking issue and with no V:\ volume, subsequent steps can't be completed.

if the DSC has stopped for you, you could go ahead and delete/clean up the Storage Spaces, close all PS windows, and re-run and see if that fixes things.

Thanks,
Matt

[frteles]

Thanks Matt. If you can have a look that would be great. We really want to use your workshop for our program, and we want to make sure everything is working properly :) Let me know when you have an update

[mattmcspirit]

Will do - currently have a deployment running that's been going for ~40 mins, so i suspect it will succeed. Kept all the defaults or the VM, E16, EastUS etc.

[mattmcspirit]

Success:

Did you choose anything different from the template defaults?

[frteles]

Yes, I chose Premium Disks, E32s_v4 and UK South...

Already tried with the default options and it worked great!

[mattmcspirit]

OK, let me try with your selections and go from there. I may have to adjust my quotas! :)