KB 970066 - How to collect SCVMM traces
Summary
In order to diagnose a failure scenario in System Center Virtual Machine Manager, it is normally required to reproduce the issue while collecting a trace using the DebugView tool.
More Information
DebugView is an application that lets you monitor debug output on your local system, or any computer on the network that you can reach via TCP/IP. It is capable of displaying both kernel-mode and Win32 debug output, so you don't need a debugger to catch the debug output your applications or device drivers generate, nor do you need to modify your applications or drivers to use non-standard debug output APIs.
Here are some common definitions that will be used throughout this article:
§ VMM Server: hub of a VMM implementation through which all other VMM components interact and communicate. The VMM server runs the VMM service, which runs commands, transfers files, and controls communications with other VMM components and with all virtual machine hosts and VMM library servers, collectively referred to as managed computers. The VMM server also connects to a SQL Server database that stores all VMM configuration information.
§ VMM admin console: a graphical user interface (GUI) used to manage the VMM server; can but does not have to be installed on the VMM server itself.
§ VMM Host: physical computer that hosts one or more virtual machines.
§ Library: catalog of resources that can be used to create and configure virtual machines in VMM.
§ Source Machine: Refers to the physical machine that will be converted to a virtual machine
Important
Traces should always be collected from all related computers. For example, if performing a P2V conversion, traces should be collected from the VMM server, the Host (if used) and the Source computer.
Collecting a trace
1. The first step is to install DebugView on each required machine. DebugView can be downloaded from the following link: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896647.aspx
2. Save the following code into a text file and name it as "odsflags.cmd":
@echo off
echo ODS control flags - only trace with set flags will go to ODS
if (%1)==() goto :HELP
if (%1)==(-?) goto :HELP
if (%1)==(/?) goto :HELP
echo Setting flag to %1...
reg ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Tracing\Microsoft\Car
mine" /v ODSFLAGS /t REG_DWORD /d %1 /f
echo Done.
goto :EXIT
:HELP
echo Usage: odsflags [flag], where flag is
echo TRACE_ERROR = 0x2,
echo TRACE_DBG_NORMAL = 0x4,
echo TRACE_DBG_VERBOSE = 0x8,
echo TRACE_PERF = 0x10,
echo TRACE_TEST_INFO = 0x20,
echo TRACE_TEST_WARNING = 0x40,
echo TRACE_TEST_ERROR = 0x80,
:EXIT
3. Save the following code into a text file and name it as "odson.reg":
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Tracing\Microsoft\Carmine]
"ODS"=dword:00000001
4. Save the following code into a text file and name it as "odsoff.reg":
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Tracing\Microsoft\Carmine]
"ODS"=dword:00000000
- Copy the above three files onto each machine to a folder such as C:\Debgview
- Through Windows Explorer, navigate to this folder and double click on “odson.reg”. This should report success.
- At an elevated command prompt change to this folder and run “odsflags.cmd 255”. This should report success.
- Restart the following services:
- Restart vmmservice on VMM server with “net stop vmmservice” and “net start vmmservice”.
- Restart the agent service on the host with “net stop vmmagent” and “net start vmmagent”.
- Restart the IIS service on the Web server with "iisreset".
- Right click on DebugView and select “Run as administrator”.
- Make sure that in its Capture menu, you have both "Capture Win32" and "Capture Global Win32" checked.
- You should be able to see tracing from the VMM components showing up in the DebugView. (If you need to collect traces for both VMM Server and the host, make sure to do these steps on all computers.)
- Reproduce the issue.
11. Once the issue has been reproduced, stop the capture on all machines. You can later save the captures, but we need the data capture to stop now.
a. On each machine remove the check next to ‘Capture Data’ in the Capture menu
b. On each machine then go to File> Save and save the log
12. This log file[s] will need to be provided to Microsoft for analysis
13. On each machine double click ‘odsoff.reg’. This should report success
References:
Additional information can be found at the following blog:
https://blogs.technet.com/chengw/archive/2008/05/08/how-to-collect-scvmm-traces.aspx
970066 How to collect traces in System Center Virtual Machine Manager
https://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;970066