Problem seeing Domain controller from Virtual Server

Some config stuff: 4 servers onsite

QTY 2 - Windows 2003 R2 (SP1) servers -- both DC's and DNS servers.
QTY 1 - Windows 2003 (SP2) server - WSUS server

The forth server (exchange) is Windows 2003 R2 (SP2) running on Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 hosted on zech2 (one of my DC main servers R2 servers shown above). I am just setting this up and exchange isn't even installed yet but my intention is to run exchange in a virtual environment.

DHCP is provided by my firewall/gateway (IPCOP)

The exchange virtserver is a static ip with the the DNS entries pointing one to each of the main server IPs.

PROBLEM:

Entire network works fine... except... most of the time zech (my other DC) and the exchange virtual server cannot see each other. When I first boot the virtserv it works fine. I can ping zech and zech can ping the exchange. I can bring up the my network and view the entire network and I can see workgroup PCs and the domain. exchange has been added to the domain. The exchange ip entries were successfully added to the DNS servers and Active Directory. Then out of the blue I can no longer ping that one DC. The other DC which is hosting the virtserv can always be seen. Every other ip on the network can be pinged by the exchange server but suddenly I loose all workgroup PCs in the Entire network and even though the domain is shown, it won't open (can't browse it). Says network can't be found.

Initially, I was logging 8021 and 8032 errors in the logs. I went in and disabled the registry entry for the browser (MaintainServerList).

No more 8021 and 8032 but...

Now after this, the Computer Browser service won't start. If I start it, it stops immediately. (This may be a desired side effect of the registry change..not sure)

When this problem is occuring, netdiag yields the following:

[WARNING] At least one of the <00> 'WorkStation Service', <03>'Messenger Service', <20> 'WINS' names is missing.

DC list test . . . . . . . . . . . : Failed
Failed to enumerate DCs by using the browser. [ERROR_NO_BROWSER_SERVERS_FOUND]

You should note that I do have two nics down on this motherboard that are teamed (single ip address, load balancing, failover). I don't know if Virtual Server is puking on this configuration or not. However, I just rebooted the virtserv and it came up fine. everything including the netdiag passed and it works. At some point 5 or so minuted after bootup, the thing tanks and goes into the described failure mode... I did check and the computer browser was not running even when everything was working so that's not it.

This problem has been driving me nuts and I really don't want to install Exchange until I fix this. Any help is appreciated.

 

There could be a number of causes for this problem, so diagnosis is going to be difficult. The three areas I would look at are:

1. Browser election. I wonder if your virtual server is seeing itself as the best candidate as the master browser and therefore is forcing a browser re-election. This takes a few minutes and is then (perhaps due to the NetBIOS browser problems you appear to have) falling over. Have a look at the results from this Google search
2. Virtual server is having problems working with your network balancing: how are you maintaining this (via NIC drivers?). Can you turn off the load balancing and test you configuration without it?
3. A firewall is kicking in somewhere. Check the firewall settings on both your actual and virtual NICs

 

Checked this out. Initially, it shows my main DC (zech) and my WSUS server as the master and backup browsers. Then after a period of time, it can't find any browsers and I get a status:6118 (I think that was the number)

Yeah, this is my next course of action. I didn't want to do this one remotely. All my Fault Tolerance teaming is done in the NIC card setup in the Configure properties of the NIC. Tonight I will try to back it out of the team.

Checked this one out already. The odd thing is as soon as I start up the Virtual server, I can no longer ping the DC that the VS is hosted on from the machine I am on.

 

OK well here's the final update on this issue. I removed the teamed nic from the host OS server and almost all my problems went away. The VS started working fine.

 

It must be something to do with the virtual server's emulation/proxying of the NIC. I'm afraid a solution is beyond me - other than turning off the pairing of the NICs. This might be a good one for a Microsoft support call. You might well have to use specific NIC - Intel Server NIC for example.

Sorry I can't be of any more help.

 

I did call them. They were clueless. They said since teaming was done at the NIC level of the server they can't help. What they did tell me was that they have specific instuctions that they do NOT support teamed NICs in VS 2005. Meaning, if you are successful at teaming, they won't support your problems if you have them ;-( For now, I have a useless NIC. Although I was considering dedicating a NIC to ONLY the VS interface and using the other one for the HOST server/DC.