SQL Server 2008 Hyber V Unleashed - p 44 pot

ptg6432687 410 13 Debugging and Problem Solving the Hyper-V Host and Guest Operating System . Avoid using too many counters. Some counters are costly in terms of taxing a server for system resources and can increase system overhead. Monitoring several activities at one time also becomes difficult. . Use logs instead of displaying graphs. The logs can then be imported into a database or report. Logs can be saved on hard disks not being monitored or analyzed. Important Objects to Monitor The numbers of system and application components, services, and threads to measure in Windows 2008 are so extensive that it is impossible to monitor thousands of processor, print queue, network, or storage usage statistics. Defining the roles a server plays in a network environment helps to narrow down what needs to be measured. Servers could be defined and categorized based on the function of the server, such as application server, file and print server, or services server such as DNS, domain controller, and so on. Because servers perform different roles, and hence have different functions, it makes sense to monitor the essential performance objects. This helps prevent the server from being overwhelmed from the monitoring of unnecessary objects for measurement or analysis. Overall, four major areas demand the most concern: memory, processor, disk subsystem, and network subsystem. They all tie into any role the server plays. The following list describes objects to monitor based on the roles played by the server: . Domain controller—Because the DC provides authentication, stores the Active Directory database, holds schema objects, and so on, it receives many requests. To be able to process all these requests, it uses up a lot of CPU resources, disks, memory, and network bandwidth. Consider monitoring memory, CPU, system, network segment, network interface, and protocol objects such as TCP, UDP, NBT, NetBIOS, and NetBEUI. Also worth monitoring are the Active Directory NTDS service and site server LDAP service objects. DNS and WINS also have applicable objects to be measured. . File and print server—The print servers that process intensive graphics jobs can utilize extensive resources of system CPU cycles very quickly. The file server takes up a lot of storage space. Monitor the PrintQueue object to track print spooling data. Also monitor CPU, memory, network segment, and logical and physical disks for both file and print data collection. . Message collaboration server—A messaging server such as an Exchange Server 2007 uses a lot of CPU, disk, and memory resources. Monitor memory collection, cache, processor, system, and logical and physical disks. Exchange objects are added to the list of objects after Exchange is installed, such as message queue length or name- resolution response time. . Web server—A web server is usually much less disk intensive and more dependent on processing performance or memory space to cache web pages and page requests. Consider monitoring the cache, network interface, processor, and memory usage. Download at www.wowebook.com ptg6432687 411 Using the Debugging Tools Available in Windows Server 2008 13 . Database server—Database servers such as Microsoft SQL Server 2008 can use a lot of CPU and disk resources. Database servers such as Microsoft SQL Server use an extensive amount of memory to cache tables and data, so RAM usage and query response times should be monitored. Monitoring objects such as system, processor, logical disk, and physical disk is helpful for overall system performance operations. Using the Debugging Tools Available in Windows Server 2008 Several useful tools are available in Windows 2008 for troubleshooting and diagnosing various problems ranging from TCP/IP connection issues to verification and maintenance issues. These tools also make it much easier for IT professionals and administrators, allow- ing IT personnel to focus on business improvement tasks and functions, not on simply running specific tools in the networking environment. TCP/IP Tools TCP/IP forms the backbone of communication and transportation in Windows 2008. Before you can communicate between machines, TCP/IP must be configured. In Windows 2008, TCP/IP is installed by default during the OS installation and is impossi- ble to add or remove through the GUI. If a TCP/IP connection fails, you need to determine the cause or point of failure. Windows 2008 includes some dependable and useful tools to troubleshoot connections and verify connectivity. The tools described in the following eight sections are useful for debugging TCP/IP connectivity problems. Most of these tools have been updated to include switches for IPv4 and IPv6. Ping Ping stands for Packet Internet Groper. It is used to send an Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo request and echo reply to verify the availability of a local or remote machine. You can think of ping as a utility that sends a message to another machine asking “Are you still there?” By default in Windows 2008, ping sends out four ICMP pack- ages and waits for responses back in one second. However, the number of packages sent or time to wait for responses can be changed through the options available for ping. Besides verifying the availability of a remote machine, ping can help determine a name- resolution problem. To use ping, go to a command prompt and enter Ping Targetname. Different parameters can be used with ping. To display them, enter Ping /? or Ping (without parameters). The parameters for the Ping command are as follows: -4—Specifies that IPv4 is used to ping. This parameter is not required to identify the target host with an IPv4 address. It is required only to identify the target host by name. Download at www.wowebook.com ptg6432687 412 13 Debugging and Problem Solving the Hyper-V Host and Guest Operating System -6—Specifies that IPv6 is used to ping. Just like -4, this parameter is not required to identify the target host with an IPv6 address. It is required only to identify the target host by name. -a—Resolves the IP address to the hostname. The hostname of the target machine is displayed if this command is successful. -f—Requests that echo back messages are sent with the Don’t Fragment flag in packets. This parameter is available only in IPv4. -i ttl—Increases the timeout on slow connections. The parameter also sets the value of the Time To Live (TTL). The maximum value is 255. -j HostList—Routes packets using the host list, which is a series of IP addresses separated by spaces. The host can be separated by intermediate gateways (loose source route). -k HostList—Similar to -j but hosts cannot be separated by intermediate gateways (strict source route). -l size—Specifies the length of packets in bytes. The default is 32. The maximum size is 65,527. -n count—Specifies the number of packets sent. The default is 4. -r count—Specifies the route of outgoing and incoming packets. It is possible to specify a count that is equal to or greater than the number of hops between the source and desti- nation. The count can be between 1 and 9 only. -R—Specifies that the round-trip path is traced (available on IPv6 only). -S count—Sets the time stamp for the number of hops specified by count. The count must be between 1 and 4. -S SrcAddr—Specifies the source address to use (available on IPv6 only). -t—Specifies that Ping should continue sending packets to the destination until inter- rupted. To stop and display statistics, press Ctrl+Break. To stop and quit ping, press Ctrl+C. -v TOS—Specifies the value of the type of service in the packet sent. The default is 0. TOS is specified as a decimal value between 0 and 255. -w timeout—Specifies the time in milliseconds for packet timeout. If a reply is not received within the timeout, the Request Timed Out error message is displayed. The default timeout is 4 seconds. TargetName—Specifies the hostname or IP address of the destination to ping. NOTE Some remote hosts can be configured to ignore ping traffic as a method of preventing acknowledgment (and thus as a security measure). Therefore, your inability to ping a server might not necessarily mean that the server is not operational, just that the serv- er is not responding for some reason. Download at www.wowebook.com ptg6432687 413 Using the Debugging Tools Available in Windows Server 2008 13 Tracert Tracert is generally used to determine the route or path taken to a destination by sending ICMP packets with varying TTL values. Each router the packet meets on the way decreases the value of the TTL by at least one; invariably, the TTL is a hop count. The path is deter- mined by checking the ICMP Time Exceeded messages returned by intermediate routers. Some routers do not return Time Exceeded messages for expired TTL values and are not captured by Tracert. In such cases, asterisks are displayed for that hop. To display the different parameters that can be used with Tracert, open a command prompt and enter tracert (without parameters) to display help or type tracert /?. The parameters associated with Tracert are as follows: -4—Specifies that tracert.exe can use only IPv4 for the trace. -6—Specifies that tracert.exe can use only IPv6 for the trace. -d—Prevents resolution of IP addresses of routers to their hostname. This is par ticularly useful for speeding up results of Tracer t. -h maximumHops—Specifies the maximum number of hops to take before reaching the destination. The default is 30 hops. -j HostList—Specifies that packets use the loose source route option. Loose source routing allows successive intermediate destinations to be separated by one or multiple routers. The maximum number of addresses in the host list is nine. This parameter is useful only when tracing IPv4 addresses. -R—Sends packets to a destination in IPv6, using the destination as an intermediate destination and testing reverse route. -S—Specifies the source address to use. This parameter is useful only when tracing IPv6 addresses. NOTE Tracer t is a good utility to determine the number of hops and the latency of communi- cations between two points. Even if an organization has an extremely high-speed con- nection to the Internet, if the Internet is congested or if the route a packet must follow requires forwarding the information between several routers along the way, the perfor- mance and, ultimately, the latency (or delay in response between servers) will cause noticeable communications delays. Pathping Pathping is a route-tracing tool that combines features of both Ping and Tracert commands, but with more information than either of those two commands provides. Pathping is most ideal for a network with routers or multiple routes between the source and destination hosts. The Pathping command sends packets to each router on its way to a destination, and then gets results from each packet returned from the router. Because Pathping computes the loss of packets from each hop, you can easily determine which router is causing a problem in the network. Download at www.wowebook.com ptg6432687 414 13 Debugging and Problem Solving the Hyper-V Host and Guest Operating System To display the parameters in Pathping, open a command prompt and enter Pathping /?. The parameters for the Pathping command are as follows: -4—Specifies that Pathping.exe can use only IPv4 for the trace. -6—Specifies that Pathping.exe can use only IPv6 for the trace. -g Host-list—Allows hosts to be separated by intermediate gateways. -h maximumHops—Specifies the maximum number of hops before reaching the target. The default is 30 hops. -n—Specifies that it is not necessary to resolve the address to the hostname. -p period—Specifies the number of seconds to wait between pings. The default is a quarter of a second. -q num_queries—Specifies the number of queries to each host along the route. The default is three seconds. -w timeout—Specifies the timeout for each reply in milliseconds. Ipconfig Ipconfig displays all TCP/IP configuration values. It is of particular use on machines running Dynamic Host Control Protocol (DHCP). It is used to refresh DHCP settings and to determine which TCP/IP configuration values have been assigned by DHCP. If Ipconfig is used without parameters, it displays IP addresses, subnet masks, and gateways for each of the adapters on a machine. The adapters can be physical network adapters or logical adapters such as dial-up connections. Some of the parameters for Ipconfig are as follows: /all—Displays all TCP/IP configuration values. /displaydns—Displays the contents of the DNS client resolver cache. /flushdns—Resets and flushes the contents of the DNS client resolver cache. This includes entries made dynamically. /registerdns—Sets manual dynamic registration for DNS names and IP addresses configured on a computer. This is particularly useful in troubleshooting DNS name regis- tration or dynamic update problems between a DNS server and client. /release [Adapter]—Sends a DHCP release message to the DHCP server to discard DHCP-configured settings for adapters. This parameter is available only for DHCP-enabled clients. If no adapter is specified, IP address configuration is released for all adapters. /renew [Adapter]—Renews DHCP configuration for all adapters (if an adapter is not specified) and for a specific adapter if the Adapter parameter is included. This parameter is available only for DHCP-enabled clients. /setclassid Adapter [classID]—Configures the DHCP class ID for a specific adapter. You can configure the DHCP class ID for all adapters by using the wildcard (*) character in place of Adapter. Download at www.wowebook.com ptg6432687 415 Using the Debugging Tools Available in Windows Server 2008 13 /showclassid Adapter—Displays the DHCP class ID for a specific adapter. /allcompartments—Displays information about all compartments. /allocmpartments /all—Displays detailed information about all compartments. NOTE Ipconfig determines the assigned configuration for a system such as the default gate- way, DNS servers, local IP address, subnet mask, and so on. When you’re debugging network problems, you can use Ipconfig to validate that the proper TCP/IP settings have been set up for a system so that a server properly communicates on the net- work. ARP ARP stands for Address Resolution Protocol. ARP enables the display and modification of the ARP table on a local machine, which matches physical MAC addresses of machines to their corresponding IP addresses. ARP increases the speed of connection by eliminating the need to match MAC addresses with IP addresses for subsequent connections. Some of the parameters for ARP are as follows: -a [InetAddr] [-N IfaceAddr]—Displays the ARP table for all adapters on a machine. Use Arp –a with the InetAddr (IP address) parameter to display the ARP cache entry for a specific IP address. -d InetAddr [IfaceAddr]—Deletes an entr y with a specific IP address (InetAddr). Use the IfaceAddr parameter (IP address assigned to the interface) to delete an entry in a table for a specific interface. Use the wildcard character in place of InetAddr to delete all entries. -g [InetAddr] [-N IfaceAddr]—Similar to the –a parameter. -s InetAddr EtherAddr [IfaceAddr]—Adds a static entry to the ARP cache that resolves the IP address (InetAddr) to a physical address (EtherAddr). To add a static ARP cache entry to the table for a specific interface, use the IP address assigned to the interface (IfaceAddr). Netstat As its name implies, Netstat (or network statistics) is used to display protocol statistics for any active connections, monitor connections to a remote host, and monitor IP addresses or domain names of hosts with established connections. The parameters for Netstat are as follows: -a—Displays all connections and listening ports by hostname. -an—Similar to the –a parameter, but displays connections and listening ports by IP addresses. -e—Displays Ethernet packets and bytes to and from the host. Download at www.wowebook.com ptg6432687 416 13 Debugging and Problem Solving the Hyper-V Host and Guest Operating System -n—Displays address and port numbers without resolving the address to the hostname. -o—Displays TCP connections and includes the corresponding process ID (PID). Used in combination with –a, -n, and –p. Not available in earlier Windows versions. -P protocol—Displays statistics based on the protocol specified. Protocols that can be specified are TCP, UDP, TCPv6, or UDPv6. It can be used with –s to display TCP, UDP, ICMP, IP, TCPv6, UDPv6, ICMPv6, or IPv6. -s—Displays statistics on a protocol-by-protocol basis. Can be used with the –p parame- ter to specify a set of protocols. -r—Displays the route table. Information displayed includes network destination, netmask, gateway, inter face, and metric (number of hops). [Parameter] Interval—Displays the information at every interval specified. Interval is a numeral in seconds. Press Ctrl+C to stop the intervals. Route Route is particularly useful for troubleshooting incorrect static routes or for adding a route to a route table to temporarily bypass a problem gateway. Static routes can be used in place of implicit routes specified by a default gateway. Use Route to add static routes to forward packets going to a gateway specified by default to avoid loops, improve traffic time, and so on. The parameters for Route are as follows: -add—Adds a route to a table. Use –p to make the route persistent for subsequent sessions. -Delete—Deletes a route from the table. -Print—Prints a route. -change—Modifies an existing route. -destination—Specifies the host address. -gateway—Specifies the address of gateway for Route. IF interface—Specifies the interface for the routing table to modify. -mask Netmask—Uses the subnet mask specified by Netmask. If mask is not used, it defaults to 255.255.255.255. -METRIC Metric—Specifies the metric, or cost, for the route using the value Metric. -f—Clears the routing table of all gateway entries. -p—Used with -add to create a persistent route. Nslookup Nslookup is used to query DNS. You can think of Nslookup as a simple diagnostic client for DNS servers. It can operate in two modes: Interactive and Noninteractive. Use Noninteractive mode to look up a single piece of data. To look up more than one piece of Download at www.wowebook.com ptg6432687 417 Using the Debugging Tools Available in Windows Server 2008 13 data, use Interactive mode. To stop Interactive mode at any time, press Ctrl+B. To exit from the command, enter exit. If Nslookup is used without any parameters, it uses the default DNS name server for lookup. The parameters for Nslookup are as follows: -ComputerToFind—Looks up information for the specified ComputerToFind. By default, it uses the current default DNS name server. -Server—Specifies the server as the DNS name server. -SubCommand—Specifies one or more Nslookup subcommands as a command-line option. Enter a question mark (?) to display a list of subcommands available. NetDiag The Network Connectivity Tester (NetDiag) tool is a command-line diagnostic tool to test network connectivity, configuration, and security. It’s included with the Support Tools on the Windows 2008 media. The tool gathers information on and tests network configura- tion, network drivers, protocols, connectivity, and well-known target accessibility. This is a good tool to use right off the bat if you think there are problems with the network connectivity of a system. One nice feature of the NetDiag.exe tool is that it does not require parameters, which makes it easy to use. Simple instructions can be given to the administrators who need to execute it, and the bulk of the time can be spent analyzing the results. Although it doesn’t require any parameters, several are available: /q—Displays quiet output (errors only). /v—Displays verbose output. /l—Logs to the NetDiag.log. /debug—Displays even more verbose output. /d: DomainName—Finds a domain controller in the domain. /fix—Fixes minor problems. /DCAccountEnum—Enumerates domain controller computer accounts. /test: TestName—Runs the specified tests only. /skip: TestName—Skips the specified tests. When specifying tests to run or to skip, nonskippable tests will still be run. DCDiag The Domain Controller Diagnostic (DCDiag) tool analyzes the state of domain controllers and services in an Active Directory forest. It is installed when the Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) role is added to a Windows 2008 installation. This is a great general- purpose test tool for checking the health of an Active Directory infrastructure. Download at www.wowebook.com ptg6432687 418 13 Debugging and Problem Solving the Hyper-V Host and Guest Operating System Tests include domain controller connectivity, replication errors, permissions, proper roles, and connectivity, and other general Active Directory health checks. It can even run non- domain-controller-specific tests, such as whether a server can be promoted to a domain controller (the dcpromo test), or register its records properly in DNS (RegisterInDNS test). DCDiag is run on domain controllers exclusively, with the exception of the dcpromo and RegisterInDNS tests. When run without any parameters, the tests will be run against the current domain controller. This runs all the key tests and is usually sufficient for most purposes. The parameters for DCDiag are as follows: /s:DomainController—Uses the domain controller as the home server. /n:NamingContext—Uses the specified naming context (NetBIOS, FQDN, or distin- guished name) to test. /u:Domain\UserName /p:{*|Password|””}—Uses the supplied credentials to run the tool. /a—Tests all domain controllers in the site. /e—Tests all domain controllers in the enterprise. /q—Displays quiet output (errors only). /v—Displays verbose output. /I—Ignores minor error messages. /fix—Fixes minor problems. /f:LogFile—Logs to the specified log file. /ferr:ErrorLogFile—Logs errors to the specified log file. /c—Comprehensively runs all tests. /test:TestName—Runs the specified tests only. /skip:TestName—Skips the specified tests. When specifying tests to run or to skip, nonskippable tests will still be run. NOTE DCDiag is automatically included on a Windows 2008 system when the AD DS role is added. Otherwise, on non–domain controllers, the utility can be added by adding the Remote Server Administration Tools feature in Server Manager. System Startup and Recovery The System Startup and Recovery utility stores system startup, system failure, and debug- ging information. It also controls the behavior (what to do) when a system failure occurs. To open System Startup and Recovery, launch Control Panel, select System, Advanced System Settings, and click the Advanced tab in the Systems Settings dialog box, and then Download at www.wowebook.com ptg6432687 419 Using the Debugging Tools Available in Windows Server 2008 13 FIGURE 13.11 The Startup and Recovery page. click Settings under Startup and Recovery to display a property page similar to the one shown in Figure 13.11. The Default Operating System field contains information that is displayed at startup. This information is typically the name of the operating system such as Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition. You can edit this information using bcdedit from a command prompt. If the machine is dual booted, there will be an entry for each operating system. The Time to Display List of Operating Systems option specifies the time the system takes to display the name of the operating system at startup. The default time is 30 seconds. This can be increased or reduced to a different time. The Time to Display Recovery Options When Needed is unchecked by default but can be selected and an interval in seconds entered. You can set the action to be taken when system failure occurs in the System Failure section. There are two options. The first option is Write an Event to the System Log. This action is not editable in Windows 2008 because this action occurs by default every time a stop error occurs. The next option, Automatically Restart, reboots the system in the event of a system failure. The Write Debugging Information section tells the system where to write debugging infor- mation when a system failure occurs. The options available include where the debugging information can be written to Small Memory Dump (128KB), Kernel Memory Dump, Complete Memory Dump, or (None). The Write Debugging Information To option requires a paging file on the boot volume, which should be the size of the physical RAM plus at least 1MB. Download at www.wowebook.com . TCP, UDP, ICMP, IP, TCPv6, UDPv6, ICMPv6, or IPv6. -s—Displays statistics on a protocol-by-protocol basis. Can be used with the p parame- ter to specify a set of protocols. -r—Displays the route. Windows versions. -P protocol—Displays statistics based on the protocol specified. Protocols that can be specified are TCP, UDP, TCPv6, or UDPv6. It can be used with –s to display TCP, UDP, ICMP,. System To display the parameters in Pathping, open a command prompt and enter Pathping /?. The parameters for the Pathping command are as follows: -4 —Specifies that Pathping.exe can use only IPv4 for