Agent Unreachable only when a user logs in.

[Lost_Steak]

The view agent is fine and works well until a user logs in. When a user logs in the VMware View Administrator reports that the status as “Agent Unreachable”

When the user logs off, it comes good and the VMware View Administrator says that the desktop is “Available”

In the windows event viewer just after a user has logged in, I get:

Event Source:    VMware View

Event Category:                VMware View

Event ID:              102

Unable to connect to any listed host. The agent will continue to retry: [view01.XYZ.com]

I have narrowed it down to Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) Management client. The Symantec agent prevents the View agent from talking to the View Administrator. Stopping and disabling all functionality of Symantec (except the management client) still does not fix the issue, ie disabling all scanning, firewall and application scanning; so the only thing that is running is the “Symantec Management Client” process (which according to services.mcs does “Provides communication with the Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager. It also provides network threat protection and application and device control for the client.”)

If I disable the “Symantec Management Client” process and kill the SMS.exe process all it good and there is no problems.

I am running VMware View 4.5,

The virtual desktop is a fully patched Windows XP SP3

Using linked clones

Thin client Wyse V10L

Symantec Endpoint Protection version  11.0.6005.562

Symantec have said to put an entry into their firewall (which I have done). But they fail to realize that I have disabled it both locally and turned off the firewall policy on the Symantec Manager.

Anyone come across this before? Any ideas?

[idle-jam]

i have SEP 11 in my environment will all default rules and everything is good. i guess it's all towards the firewall rules.

[marcelo_soares]

Just to be sure everything is working correctly, check the registry key:

Hkey local machine\software\microsoft\windowsNT\current version\Winlogon\Userinit

It should have the following EXACT value:

C:\Windows\system32\userinit.exe,"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware View\Agent\bin\wssm.exe",

Don't forget the last comma, is important.

[Lost_Steak]

Just to confirm,

You simply rolled out the agent on the base image and then created a set of linked clones from it and it was all fine?

Also (and this may not the place to ask) but is there a way of ensuring that every thing is set to default on the SEP management?

Thanks

[idle-jam]

yes that's what we did. depending on your requirements the default seems good for my environment.

[Lost_Steak]

Hi,

I have checked the registry, and that setting is already there.

Thanks for your input, any other ideas?

[eeg3]

Could it be that the "Symantec Management Client” process is trying to use the same port the View wants to communicate over? Are you using the default port for both?

[Lost_Steak]

I am using a default install of both agents. As mentioned above, this should not be an issue.

Is it possible that they both require a windows component of some sort that is causing a conflict? and if so, how would i go about finding the conflict?

[Lost_Steak]

I have managed to get things up and running,

I had to rebuild the base image.

I am putting this down to "over optimisation" of the image (Windows XP booting in under 11 seconds isn't bad). Where one of the optimiations broke something between the agents. While I would have loved to  know exactly what it was, I just didn't have the time.

In short a default SEP11 install works fine with the install and configuration outlined in the VMware Install and Configure guide.

Thanks for your help.

[idle-jam]

thanks for sharing back with the solutions and happy to hear that things are good now ..