Support Tip: Adding a Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 core server to VMM 2012 fails with Error 441

Hi, Richard Mascarenhas here and I wanted to mention an issue you might run into when adding a Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Core computer to System Center Virtual 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM). When adding a Core computer you may see the following error:

Error (441)
Agent communication is blocked. On server <HOST_NAME>, the version of virtualization software or the VMM agent is unsupported.

You may also see the following error when installing Microsoft Visual C++ and then the VMM agent manually on the Windows Server Core system:

"The subsystem needed to support the image type is not present"

Typically this will occur if the ServerCore-WOW64 feature is not enabled on the computer running Windows Server Core.

To enable the ServerCore-WOW64 feature, complete the following:

1.       Logon to the Server Core computer as an administrator.

2.       Run the following command exactly as shown:

DISM.EXE /online /enable-feature /featurename:ServerCore-WOW64

NOTE: The feature name 'ServerCore-WOW64' is case sensitive.

3.       Restart the computer when prompted.

Once restarted, try to add the Core server as a host to VMM again. This should fix the issue but if it still fails, install the correct version of Microsoft Visual C++ and then the correct VMM agent manually on the Windows Core server and then try adding the core server to VMM again. Both Microsoft Visual C++ and the VMM agent are found in the location C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2012\Virtual Machine Manager\agents\amd64.

Richard Mascarenhas| Support Engineer | Microsoft CTS Management and Security Division

Get the latest System Center news onFacebookandTwitter:

System Center All Up: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/
System Center – Configuration Manager Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
System Center – Data Protection Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
System Center – Orchestrator Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
System Center – Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
System Center – Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
System Center – Virtual Machine Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm

Windows Intune: http://blogs.technet.com/b/windowsintune/
WSUS Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/sus/
The AD RMS blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/rmssupp/

The Forefront Endpoint Protection blog : http://blogs.technet.com/b/clientsecurity/
The Forefront Identity Manager blog : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ms-identity-support/
The Forefront TMG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/isablog/
The Forefront UAG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/edgeaccessblog/