[sims] SIMS and Solus3 - I just despair

[winng]

I've had a Bl**dy awful week since deploying the Autumn 2 update last weekend.

 

Three out of four schools appeared to be okay with one being a right pain in the neck with only a handful of computers receiving the update successfully!

 

I've got computers appearing as Offline when I know they are in use and can be pinged from the server.

 

I've got computers appearing as Failed although it says update was successfully installed.

 

I've got computers appearing as In progress but they get no further.

 

Then one of the earlier successful schools report connect.ini errors (although they've been okay for the past three days). I've resent it from the server and manually copied it to some.

 

The latter also reporting that when attempting to use InTouch their SIMS crashes.

 

The number of emails and tickets being generated for my attention is overwhelming....

 

Anyway, Friday tomorrow (except I've got a SIMS Steering Committee meeting in the afternoon - great timing).

[3s-gtech]

I pushed it out this week too, along with SOLUS 3.8 (we were on 3.6). It has highlighted a good number of broken SOLUS clients which I've just removed and re-deployed, but has been generally good. My experience is that SOLUS 3 is a great indicator of even the smallest flaws with your DNS - any out of date/stale records etc any it plays up. Our DNS has been through many fun times as a result, but its current state is much better for this testing.

[winng]

I've run

 

ipconfig /dnsflush

net stop dnscache

net start dnscache

[3s-gtech]

Check your scavenging settings for your DNS servers. If there are stale entries in there, clearing the cache won't help. If this is the fault, you'll also find that this fixes general reliability and stability of several other services too!

[Griff]

The ones that are saying failed but have installed the update are they now showing offline ?

[ITBadger]

I've also had lots of issues with Autumn 2 via Solus. It seems that a large number of clients fall over half way through the solus agent update. When this happens the Sims.Solus3.Agent.AgentService.exe.config file that lives in c:\Program Files\Solus3\AgentService by default develops one or more of the following issues:

 

1) The 'agentid' entry differs from that stored in the Solus3 database. To fix this you need to gather the agent_guid result for your problem clients (i used SQL Management Server) to query the database for these) and compare them to what is in the .config file. If these differ then update the .config file to match the agent_guid on the server, save the file and restart the Solus3Agent Service.

 

2) The paths and ports in the same file may have reverted to the generic 'localhost:9999' and 'localhost:8888' settings. You'll need to edit the port numbers to match your Solus3 Server settings, along with pointing the second entry to the Solus3 server rather than localhost. Again you'll need to save the file and restart the Solus3Agent service on the client.

 

I'm led to believe that not many schools have had this issue so the solution above may not be relevant to you. Without it though, i'd still have half my school unable to run SIMS...

[glen_j]

I've also had lots of issues with Autumn 2 via Solus. It seems that a large number of clients fall over half way through the solus agent update. When this happens the Sims.Solus3.Agent.AgentService.exe.config file that lives in c:\Program Files\Solus3\AgentService by default develops one or more of the following issues:

 

1) The 'agentid' entry differs from that stored in the Solus3 database. To fix this you need to gather the agent_guid result for your problem clients (i used SQL Management Server) to query the database for these) and compare them to what is in the .config file. If these differ then update the .config file to match the agent_guid on the server, save the file and restart the Solus3Agent Service.

 

2) The paths and ports in the same file may have reverted to the generic 'localhost:9999' and 'localhost:8888' settings. You'll need to edit the port numbers to match your Solus3 Server settings, along with pointing the second entry to the Solus3 server rather than localhost. Again you'll need to save the file and restart the Solus3Agent service on the client.

 

I'm led to believe that not many schools have had this issue so the solution above may not be relevant to you. Without it though, i'd still have half my school unable to run SIMS...

 

you're not alone, We had the same issues the agent guid's were correct but the paths and ports had changed to the default of localhost:9999. Either manual editing the files or uninstalling the agent and reinstalling worked for us although not much fun either way.

[Griff]

The GUID mismatching has happened on the server agent twice now so it updates the agent and immediately says its offline, so I wait 2 days for SIMS to ring back remote on and fix it in under 2 minutes normally with that ESSUtility tool they have which they always remove from the desktop after they have finished

[Ghostgame]

The GUID mismatching has happened on the server agent twice now so it updates the agent and immediately says its offline, so I wait 2 days for SIMS to ring back remote on and fix it in under 2 minutes normally with that ESSUtility tool they have which they always remove from the desktop after they have finished

 

There is a registry setting for S3 GUID in Windows.

Change that and it will stop mismatching after each SOLUS3 update.

[winng]

And after hours of remote support today their conclusion is the firewall is blocking the ports so need to refresh the existing GPO and push it out, reboot all workstations and redeploy.

 

Oh I wish it was going to be so easy....