Debugging Server Pool Creation Errors

One of the tougher aspects of Oracle VM is deciphering how to debug errors found in the logs within the Oracle VM Manager. Today I’d like to discuss an issue I’ve come across when trying to create a server pool within the Oracle VM Manager. The bug specifically consisted of my Oracle VM Manager not correctly entering the proper IP information within the /etc/hosts file of my Oracle VM Server host.

 

During the initalization process of your OVS repository via the OVM Manager, a file named cluster.conf under the directory structure of /etc/ocfs2 will be created within your OVM Server host. It will also add an entry into your /etc/hosts file with your specific IP and hostname for your OVM Server host. The problem lies when one of the two files does not get properly configured causing the following error found within your OVM Manager Server Pool log with the details below:

During creating server pool (ovmbiee), cluster setup failed: (OVM-1011 OVM Manager communication with 172.16.150.59 for operation HA Setup for Oracle VM Agent 2.2.0 failed: errcode=00000, errmsg=Unexpected error: <Exception: ha_check_hostname_ip failed: <Exception: Invalid hostname/IP configuration: hostname=w28-r710-biee;ip=127.0.0.1>)

In order to better understand the error, let us discuss further in detail what is happening. In this bug example above, the error is caused by the communication information between the Oracle VM Manager and the Oracle VM Agent not matching. I entered my IP as 172.16.150.59 via the OVM Manager GUI, but the Oracle VM Agent on the OVM Server host was reporting an IP of 127.0.0.1 causing a conflict and thus failing the creation of the server pool. The end result was to manually edit the /etc/hosts file with the appropriate IP for our hostname and run the creation for our server pool once more via the Oracle VM Manager.