SCVMM 2012 - Failed to add "Microsoft Sythetic Ethernet Port"

So the title of this blog is slightly ironic as it should be more "Once Yearly IT" as I haven't had as much time as I'd like to commit to posting here. I will post about my latest project/problem in hopes that I can spare someone else a few hours of misery.

Lately we have been building our own development VM host machines using 2U rackmount cases, Tyan motherboards, 2x 1.9 Ghz 12 core Opterons, and 64GB of PC3-10600 1333. Lets just say, for what we would pay for a 2U box from a vendor with less specs, we could build 3 of these. As we are amassing quite a lot of VMs now with our new hardware, my boss has tasked me with implementing a way to create a private cloud with a web interface so that end users can create, manage and deploy their own VMs without bothering us constantly about it.

This is where Microsoft's System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 comes in. I had tinkered with the beta for a short time, but recently the RC became available for download. There are already several good blogs out there outlining how to properly install SCVMM 2012 so I won't spend any time discussing that, rather this blog post will be about an error that had me racking my brain for days and scouring technet posts for hours at a time. Installation went smoothly, I created the host group without a hitch, added all of our development machines to the host group, it was all going smooth... too smooth.

My first hitch came when I attempted to create my first VM directly on a host using a blank vhd and mounting a network-shared ISO. SAVE YOURSELF A LOT OF TIME: Don't bother trying to mount an ISO from one of your library shares, it will not work. Hopefully that is fixed in the the RTM. I kept getting the same error over and over, the creation job would run to 50% and fail with an error of" Failed to add Microsoft sythentic ethernet port". I could go to the very same host machine and create a VM manually and the network adapter would create fine, this had me pulling my hair out.

Simple solution: We are running Trend OfficeScan client on all of our machines, in fact it is in the PXE images I have created. After scouring the internet for days, I kept noticing a common trend (pun intended), and that was that trend was causing issues with adding hardware during VM creation. After uninstalling officescan client, the vm created fine, network adapter and all.

I am now in the process of refining our VM templates for use in the Self-Service Portal/Private Cloud, check back as I will certainly be making blog posts as the progress continues.

New Beginnings

Like a lot of young professionals my age, I grew up using technology to communicate with friends and watched social networking blossom from the early days of IRC and ICQ to AOL Instant Messenger and various blogging sites all the way to where we are today with Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. I have maintained several personal blogs over the years, but this is my first professional blog so hang on with me as I adapt to the difference in writing techniques.

Let's start with a little about me, I am 25 and a Systems Analyst for a booming IT Consulting company in Southeast Alabama. My first computer was a Commodore 64 my father brought home from work and I have faint memories of playing Donkey Kong and Wheel of Fortune on that machine. The more I tinkered, the more I got hooked and eventually I got into building my own machines. Like most other young teenagers, I enjoyed gaming so me and my buddies a few times a month would bring our machines to our houses, hook up a 5-port hub and go to work. This went on for several years and after experimenting with several different majors, I decided that the IT and technology space is where I needed to be. I received my B.S. degree in Information Systems from UAB in May of 2011.

Enough about me, let's attempt to answer the real question on everybody's mind, what is the purpose of this blog? I plan to keep a historical account of my current projects and any errors that I encounter along the way, for my benefit as well as anybody else who may run into the same issue. For today, let's start with something fun, my new super computer build. My boss wanted each of us to build a new machine so that we could stay current on how to do so, and gave us a pretty fair budget to accomplish this. Below are the specs on the machine I priced out:

The List
Asus P6T6 WS Revolution MoBo
WD 2TB 7200 RPM drive
Intel Core i7-970 Gulftown 3.2GHZ Six-Core Processor
WD 450GB 10000RPM drive x 2 (RAID 0)
ATI Radeon HD4670
CORSAIR 850w power supply
OCZ 120gb SSD
24GB DDR3
CoolerMaster HAF 912 MidTower Case

The Pictures

Still waiting on the motherboard to show up so I can finish the rest of the build. Thanks for reading and I look forward to updating this regularly.