Citrix NetScaler 12 – CLI upgrade helps

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 8 Comments

There is a new and shiny NetScaler version available – version 12! Smile

All the news and docs are available here, and you can download the latest bits from here. But, I will not write about them now – there is something else I would like to share.

Unlike with other (minor) upgrades, upgrading to this version… well, there were some “challenges”. If you have used Citrix NetScaler before, it has its nice and simple GUI, through which you can do many things… one of them being a system upgrade.

Upgrade process by using GUI is pretty straight-forward:

  • download the latest firmware from Citrix website (.tgz file)
  • login to the appliance and save current configuration
  • if you are using virtual appliances, you can also do a snapshot or checkpoint (depending on the virtualization platform you are using)
  • go to System – System Upgrade and select the firmware file and click Upgrade

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  • when installation completes, reboot the appliance
  • enjoy your shiny, new NetScaler 12 (upgraded in just 6 steps)! Smile

And now about “the other way”… Smile

As I’ve observed, upgrade option through GUI was not working (for me) in any of the major browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge or even Internet Explorer) – upload of firmware finishes and then… nothing really happens. Strange, but… it’s just my luck. No big deal! Smile

What helped in my case:

  • download the latest firmware from Citrix website (.tgz file)
  • use PuTTY to establish SSH connection to your appliance
  • run save config to save all the changes you have made to your existing configuration (but maybe forgot to save it before Smile)
  • if you are using virtual appliances, you can also do a snapshot or checkpoint (depending on the virtualization platform you are using)
  • type in shell (to enter the shell, where we will work with files)
  • create a folder for the new version (I have simply called it 12, as in /var/nsinstall/12/, where I will upload the new firmware)
  • use PSCP (PuTTy Secure Copy Client), also a free command-line utility to copy firmware to the appliance, inside the newly created folder:

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  • go back to PuTTy and extract the contents of this firmware:

  • once extracted, run the ./installns command, which will actually do the upgrade (something that was never triggered in my GUI upgrade attempts, obviously Smile)
  • when installation completes, reboot the appliance

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  • enjoy your shiny, new NetScaler 12 (upgraded in just 11 steps)! Smile

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For a longer, better explained… and official version, please check the Citrix docs, available here.

Note that nothing really changes in your usual upgrade routine – those steps are just in case you have trouble with the GUI, as I did (if your GUI works normally, with your browser, use it).

Hope it helps!

Cheers!

Updates and Recommendations not working in SCOM 2016

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 0 Comment

Not so long ago, there was a thread about this issue on TechNet Forums – long story short, in some cases (if you didn’t do a clean installation of System Center 2016 – Operations Manager, for example), the shiny, new feature called Updates and Recommendations didn’t work.

Even better – there was a rather cryptic error saying “An error occurred while displaying the Updates and Recommendations view. This might be because the database query has encountered an error…”.

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So… it looks that maybe the database query has indeed “encountered an error”.

What can we do to make sure and resolve this?

As the user Chandra Bose suggested, we can look for duplicates in our imported management packs… and maybe we will be smarter then.

PowerShell command we can use:

This will list our imported management packs and their versions, and we can start looking for duplicate(s).

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In my case, there were some – some of them were the two management packs called Microsoft.SystemCenter.WebApplicationSolutions.Library.Resources.*.

To get a better look on those two, we can use the following command:

And the output looks like this:

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This shows that we really have two “duplicate” management packs in our SCOM database, one installed in 2013, and another in 2014 (why? and how? don’t really matter Smile). We need to remove one, obviously.

For that, we can use the following command (by using the Id property from previous command):

And, if there are no more duplicates, our Updates and Recommendations view should work now:

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Hope this helps.

Cheers!

Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview – Upgrade tips

By Tomica Kaniski in Other 0 Comment

If you are planning to upgrade your Windows Server 2012 to the Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview (and you are not planning to spend some time reading the documentation), here are some tips that can help you make this more quickly, and (hopefully) without errors:

  • CREATE A FULL BACKUP! (before proceeding with upgrade, of course)
  • you can only upgrade Windows Server installation which is installed onto physical disk (i.e. you cannot upgrade Boot from VHD(X) installation, as you will get error saying this in compatibility report before upgrade starts) (note that you still can upgrade Windows Server installation in virtual machines, though)
  • make sure that you have enough disk space available (the compatibility report says that at least 42609 MB of free space is required)
  • make sure that your applications (and drivers) support Windows Server 2012 R2 (unfortunately, site with the compatible apps and documentation (as it says inside the upgrade wizard – http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=243105) still isn’t alive, so you can’t check your applications there)
  • make sure that you have enabled page file on C: drive (I’ve had one on D: only, and the upgrade kept failing until I’ve create one on the C: drive also)
  • make sure that you don’t go online and install updates during installation (as this will probably make the upgrade fail, saying that it cannot open Compatibility report)
  • remember – if you get error during upgrade, you can always check upgrade log files located in “$WINDOWS.~BTSourcesPanther” (or “%WINDIR%Panther”) folder

I will update this list as something new comes up (also, feel free to comment with your upgrade experiences).

Thanks for reading (and good luck)!