Here’s a new Knowledge Base article we published this morning. This one talks about an issue you can run into if your AD groups have circular references.
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Symptoms
After changing the Self-Service Owner of a Virtual Machine (VM) to an AD Security Group in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager, the console becomes unresponsive and after a few minutes displays the following:
Attempting to reconnect
Another dialog maybe also be shown with the following:
An unknown error occurred while executing the PowerShell script:
The connection to the VMM management server <VMM Server> was lost. Ensure that the <VMM Server> is online and that you can access the server remotely from your computer. Then connect to the <VMM Server> and try the command again using the new connection. Or, you can ensure that the Virtual Machine Manager service is started on <VMM Server>. Then connect to<VMM Server> and try the command again using the new connection. If the command fails again because of a connection failure, restart the Virtual Manager service and then try the operation again.
Try the operation again. If the issue persists contact Microsoft Help and Support
ID: 27235
The Event logs will contain the following:
Log Name: System
Source: Service Control Manager
Event ID: 7031
Level: Error
Description: The System Center Virtual Machine Manager service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this <#> times(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 100 milliseconds: Restart the service.
Log Name: Application
Source: Application Error
Event ID: 1000
Level: Error
Description:
Faulting application name: vmmservice.exe, version: 3.0.####.0, time stamp: 0x4e92b38a
Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 6.1.7601.17651, time stamp: 0x4e21213c
Exception code: 0xe053534f
Fault offset: 0x000000000000cacd
Faulting process id: 0x%9
Faulting application start time: 0x%10
Faulting application path: %11
Faulting module path: %12
Report Id: %13
Cause
This can occur if the AD security group's membership is such that it is part of a circular membership. In the following example, adding any of the AD groups would result in the failure because Group_Users is a member of Group_VMMSSU and contains references to Group_VMMSSU:
Group_VMMSSU
> Group_Users
> > Group_VMMSSU
> Group_Admins
> > Group_2
It is this circular membership that results in the vmmservice encountering a StackOverflowException [Exception code: 0xe053534f] and terminating unexpectedly.
Resolution
To resolve this issue, review the AD group membership for any circular references and remove them. If the circular reference is not obvious, the script below can list the nested members of a particular group.
NOTE Use Active Directory Users and Computers to determine the top most group of the group causing issues.
dsquery group -name "Group_VMMSSU" | dsget group -members -expand
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For the most current version of this article please see the following:
J.C. Hornbeck | System Center & Security Knowledge Engineer
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