Cloudmersive Private Cloud Installation Troubleshooting

Overview

Cloudmersive provides tools to assist you with installation troubleshooting as well as this guide that can help to identify solutions to issues that may arise during installation.

Installing Latest Windows Updates

Important: It is very important that you install the latest Windows Updates on your Windows Server prior to beginning the Cloudmersive Private Cloud. This is not just a best practice, it is required. This is because, over time Microsoft makes small changes to the Windows Server Kernel, and Cloudmersive Private Cloud is deployed using Windows Containers running on Docker. Docker for Windows requires the latest Windows Server Kernel updates in order to function correctly. Installing without the latest Windows Updates can cause issues with Docker and Windows Containers where containers may fail to start, or Docker may fail to install. For example, KB3176936 is required for Docker to work.

Installation Readiness Check

The Cloudmersive Private Cloud installation Readiness Check tool can help you to verify that all of the preconditions to installation are met. Oftentimes, installation issues are caused due to readiness problems, such as installing on an unsupported operating system, having inadequate disk space, and so on. The Readiness Check tool will automatically verify all installation preconditions for you.

To run the Readiness Check, navigate to the Cloudmersive Management Portal and click on Private Cloud. Then select the node you wish to check the readiness for. Finally, scroll down to the section Diagnostics and Troubleshooting section and follow the instructions to run the Readiness Check.

If issues are found, take action to correct the specific issues that are identified.

Installation Health Check

If you have completed the Cloudmersive Private Cloud installation process, and the server is not working as expected, or you wish to verify if the installation completed successfully, you will want to run the Installation Health Check. This will verify the health of the running system after the install has completed. Note: do not run the health check prior to completing all of the installation steps as directed.

To run the Health Check, navigate to the Cloudmersive Management Portal and click on Private Cloud. Then select the node you wish to check the health for. Finally, scroll down to the section Diagnostics and Troubleshooting section and follow the instructions to run the Health Check.

If issues are found, take action to correct the specific issues that are identified.

Conflicts with Group Policy Configuration

It is possible that Group Policy or other server configurations may conflict with Cloudmersive Private Cloud. These settings are controlled through Software Restriction policies in Group Policy in Active Directory. Some IT departments restrict software to only whitelisted certificates, or only digitally signed certificates. If this is the case, you will need to disable these policies for the Cloudmersive Private Cloud server, or individually whitelist the critical Cloudmersive processes such as cmxd.exe and ProcessManager.exe.

Conflicts with Other Software

It is possible that other software installed on your server automatically by your operations team or IT department may conflict with Cloudmersive Private Cloud.

In particular, any type of security software that restricts processes from starting may block key Cloudmersive Private Cloud processes from starting, such as ProcessManager.exe or cmxd.exe. It is important for these processes to start for optimal functioning of the platform.

It is not recommended that you run other virus scanning software such as Windows Defender on the same server as Cloudmersive Private Cloud, because Cloudmersive Private Cloud includes a virus scanning server. If Windows Defender or other virus scanning software is running/enabled, it is recommended that you disable it.

Inadequate Hardware

It is important to adhere to the best practices for minimum hardware specification; critically you must have at least 16 GB of RAM on your server, and 200 GB of disk space on your server.

Wrong Operating System

Cloudmersive Private Cloud requires Windows Server 2016 specifically, and will not function on other versions of Windows Server.

Issues Installing or Running Docker

For Docker to run, the Windows Server must have all of the latest updates. Running on an older version of Windows Server 2016 that does not have the latest cumulative updates such as KB3176936 will cause Docker to fail to start, or fail to behave as expected. To address this, ensure that all avaialble Windows Updates have been installed on the server prior to beginning the installation process.

After rebooting after installing Pre-requisites, you can verify that Docker is running by running this command and ensuring no errors are printed to the screen:

docker version

If you run this command and receive an error, then it means that Docker may not have installed correctly. In some environments, Docker may have trouble downloading or installing. We have provided an installation script to assist with this. From the Cloudmersive Private Cloud installation directory you can run this command to manually install Docker:

./InstallDocker.ps1

Once this installation completes, restart the server and then try running the docker version command again to verify that Docker is running.

Issues with Outbound Proxy Servers

In some server environments, customers configure an outbound HTTP proxy server for all traffic leaving the server. This can cause issues for installation in two ways:

First, the proxy server may cause TLS certificate verification to fail. To address this, you will need to follow the steps in the Cloudmersive Management Portal to configure the outbound proxy server settings.
Second, the proxy server may explicitly block endpoints that the Cloudmersive Private Cloud installer needs to connect to to complete the installation. Please whitelist all of the endpoints listed in the Cloudmersive Management Portal to allow outbound traffic to these endpoints/domains.

No Internet Connection

In some server environments, the Internet connection may be unavailable or non-existant. It is important to enable outbound Internet connectivity during the installation process to configure and install your server. Once your server has been installed, you can disable the Internet connection.