Task Services are not able to be assigned to a newly added Site Server

Products

• IT Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

The "Task Service" box cannot be enabled.

Scenario:  A newly added Site Server cannot be assigned Task Service duties because the box was grayed / greyed out, and could not be enabled.

1. The new computer is not in the filter “Potential Tasks Servers”. 
   select c.Guid, c.Name
from CollectionMembership cm
join vComputer c on c.Guid = cm.ResourceGuid
where cm.CollectionGuid = '82D42246-52BC-4D94-BF9E-8935921AEE58'
order by c.Name
2. The usually suspected causes, such as Agent Version not being the latest, and .NET 6.1 or later being installed, were both discounted. The computer met both of these requirements according to the database.

Environment

SMP 8.x

Cause

Possible Cause 1:  The server has .NET 4.7x is installed on it. As a result it is not a member of the filter "Potential Task Servers"

Note:   .NET 4.7x is supported in SMP 8.1 RU7x but not officially supported on RU5 or 6. However if 8.1 RU5 or 6 is installed there have been no problems discovered/reported when using .NET 4.7.

To verify if the problem is the version of .NET run the following SQL query against the database. If it returns 4.7x in the "NETVersion" column then condition is confirmed.

declare @name nvarchar(40) = 'ComputerName'

select c.Guid, c.Name, nfv.NETVersion, nfv.ExactNETVersion
from [Inv_AeX_AC_NetFrameworkVersions] nfv
join vComputer c on c.Guid = nfv._ResourceGuid
where c.Name = @name
order by ExactNETVersion

 

Possible Cause 2:

The reason why the new Site Server was not in the “Potential Tasks Servers” filter because it was somehow in the filter “All Computers where the Cloud-enabled Management feature is enabled” whose members are excluded from.  This filter is found under “Manage \ Filters \ Computer Filters”

Or run the following query against the database:

select c.Guid, c.Name
from CollectionMembership cm
join vComputer c on c.Guid = cm.ResourceGuid
where cm.CollectionGuid = 'EA643ED2-3444-4CC5-9A94-DF8E7C1F286B'
order by c.Name

The default target used by the Policy “Settings \ Notification Server \ Cloud-enabled Management \ Cloud-enabled Management Settings” uses the filter “All Computers where the Cloud-enabled Management feature is enabled” which caused the SMA running on the Site Server to turn on CEM Mode (in the “Network Status” section.)

It may say something similar to the following:

CEM Mode:        Cloud-enabled Management mode is enabled, but inactive.

This means it is expecting to be communicating through the cloud (CEM) gateway, even though it resides on the inside. Computers that are seen in the filter where this feature is enabled cannot be assigned Task Services.

When this setting gets turned on, and the SMA sends in a basic inventory the “InternetModeSupported” column in the table “Inv_AeX_AC_Network_Zone” gets set to “1” in relation to the computer's _ResourceGuid.  This is how the inclusion query for the filter “All Computers where the Cloud-enabled Management feature is enabled” picks its members. And, as a result the "Potential Tasks Servers" filter excludes the computer from consideration as a Task Server.

The question became:  How did it get set to this value, and how do you get it back into the “Potential Tasks Servers” filter so that it so that TS can be added to it?

 In this case it is/was  a “cart-before-the-horse” scenario. It can easily be reproduced.

1. The computer, at one time was added to a custom target used by the “Cloud-enabled Management Settings” policy.
2. When the Site Server’s SMA checked in it was given the policy settings to enable CEM mode.
3. The target that was used to apply the CEM policy to the Site Server was later seen as a mistake so it was removed.
4. The problem is that, after the SMA enabled the CEM settings the computer became a permanent member of the filter “All Computers where the Cloud-enabled Management feature is enabled”, which keeps the CEM settings policy applying the CEM mode to the Site Server’s agent.

Therefore it remains in the filter whose members “Potential Task Servers” excludes.

Catch-22.

 

Resolution

Solution for Cause 1:  

1.  Attached to this article is "Potential Task Servers.xml" save this file to a folder of choice.
2. Open the SMP Console and go to "Manage > Filters > Computer Filters"
3. Right click on the folder "Task Server Filters" and select "Import"
4. Browse to the saved XML file and select it.
5. Refresh the console tree and hightlight the imported filter and click the refresh button.  Assuming the computer meets all other OS criteria it should show up in the filter. If it does then the "Task Services" box will not be grayed out when adding services to the Site Server.

 

 

Solution for cause 2:

1. Copy the GUID of the site server and plug it into the following SQL in the “Set” parameter of line #2, and run it via SQL Management Studio against the Symantec_CMDB database.
2. declare @guid uniqueidentifier
set @guid = '<Guid>'
update Inv_AeX_AC_Network_Zone set InternetModeSupported = 0 where _ResourceGuid = @guid
3. In the SMP console select the filter “Manage \ Filters \ Computer Filters \ All Computers where the Cloud-enabled Management feature is enabled”
4. Click “Update membership” button.
5. Open the Windows Tasks Scheduler library on the SMP server and run the task “NS.Complete Resource Membership Update.{bce0a681-47d2-4702-accb-6c248940639a}”
6. When the complete membership update task is run, then run the task “NS.Policy Filter Update.{c1aa60e3-43cf-49b8-a7cb-8531b06bf871}”
7. Access the site server and open the Agent dialogue panel and click “Update Configuration”; or wait for it to naturally check in within the hour.
8. If everything has gone as it should the configuration should change and the SMA on the site server should change back to “Cloud-enabled Management mode is disabled”
9. In the SMP console go into “Settings \ Notification Server \ Site Server Settings \ Site Servers” and attempt to add the Tasks Service to the computer. At this point the box should be enabled.