I’ve recently helped investigate a number of SBS 2008 and Windows 2008 servers that have gone offline and have things like DHCP not working, unable to access network drives and the like. Two common threads on these servers were that they both had TrendMicro WFBS 6.0 installed as well as IT Control Suite for the resellers to manage them.
After much investigation I found the issue was related to the Windows Firewall which seemed to go crazy and prevented proper communication to the server. I checked with my buddies in CSS at Microsoft (thanks Damian) and they suggested I look at the firewall rules in the registry at the location below.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\SharedAccess\Parameters\FirewallPolicy\FirewallRules
).
"{DDC8B132-3BFA-4588-8F88-575668C5C025}"="v2.0|Action=Allow|Active=TRUE|Dir=In|App=c:\\windows\\itcvnc\\itcvnc.exe|Name=VNC APP|Edge=FALSE|"
"{DC0E3700-04D7-4001-A8DB-D306D99CB33B}"="v2.0|Action=Allow|Active=TRUE|Dir=In|App=C:\\Program Files (x86)\\itControl Connector\\daemon.exe|Name=itcs FileServer|Edge=FALSE|"
When I did – on one server I found it took over 35 minutes to expand and list that registry key. It then showed me over 98,000 rules that were duplicates. All of them created by the IT Control Suite application. Deleting 98,000 rules is painful to be sure, but can be done and once gone the problem was fixed… for a while. It appears that the IT Control Suite application was creating them for some reason without checking if they first existed.
I’ve spoken to IT Control Suite and they’ve found a fix, but are only deploying it to customers who report the problem to them… I’m sorry but that’s not good enough. I find it inexcusable for a vendor who KNOWS of a problem, has a way to DETECT the problem and yet will not AUTOMATICALLY push out a fix to their clients… instead waiting for them to call. Honestly – I’m not happy with that arrangement and would hope for their customers sake they think long and hard about that.. it will lose them customers…
I agree. What if the person working on this troubled server just gets completely stumped and never calls IT Control? They are assuming that the people with the issue with find out the issue is with the IT Control software in the first place. What if they don’t? How much of the customer’s and client’s time will be wasted? It seems they are not concerned about that. Bad business.
Anthony,
That is exactly my point. In the two scenarios I personally have dealt with so far, the reseller did not even THINK it was the software that they use to manage the systems that could cause this type of problem. When I asked IT Control Suite about the issue their response was “why didn’t they call us…”.
I can only hope that IT Control Suite learns the lesson from this and it helps them improve their customer support. That to me (the ability for a vendor to learn from mistakes) is the true sign of a vendor you want to have a relationship with.
Wayne