Hi! we´ve got:

4x LP JBOD (32TB Total)
2x File managers (4Gb environment)
3x PortServer Pro
1x MediaManager v4.5.14
2x CaptureManager server, 2 clients.
12x Ingest Airspeed v2.5.1R80
4x PlayOut Airspeed v2.5.1R80
Many Ethernet attached NCXP and other fibre clients (Adrenalines).

MediaNet 4.2.2

All those cuties were running smooth until last tuesday (5 days ago). That was when a PortServer started to refuse connections from clients, apparently radomly. On the event viewer of the PSP you can see errors every 15 secs, aprox, saying "Error Ensuring Connectivity, will retry later" (Source: AvidUnityPortServer). As I wasn´t able to restart it (yes, this is a 7x24 news environment, and some clients were OK) my partner did it the day after.
The event viewer started to log the same error with the same frequency.
The rest of the equipment is OK, and Apart from the errors everything -seems- to be OK.
Questions are:

1.- Any idea about what the error means?
2.- Any workaround for it? —I want to avoid a full system restart because the amount of equipment involved is huge, and consequently is the time of the downed system.
3.- The last one: any idea about how to remove the "AvidComm fake disk" devices installed somewhere on WinXP? —I´m absolutely sure that Avid has a document saying the cons of having tons of those devices installed, and how to remove them, but I can´t find it.

Your help will be very appreciated!

Thank you very much.

First of all,  if you haven't done a full system restart in over 6 months,  you are overdue for one.

It sounds like the system has lost connectivity with the Unity via ethernet-  the licening to ALLOW portserver clients to connect or not comes from the Unity dongle. OR you have exceeded the maximum client count dictated by that dongle, perhaps due to phantom systems.   Check the clients actually connected to the Portservers via their own viewers.

Fake Com?   That is the service that "hides" the physical fibre volumes from being presented to an XP system do NOT remove under penalty of causing severe damage to your Unity drive set.    Remove it and your system will get some serious downtime for restarts.

JDS

 Thanks for that, Doc!

Our last full restart was 17 days ago, and nothing was added nor changed in our system. The next one will be soon!

I thonk that the problem may be originated by a phantom client; the active FM says that the license allows 10 clients, and I've two left (actualy, it says that 11 clients are connected, but not all of them are workstations). I'm anxious about a full restart.

Anyway, did you ever saw this error reported in a PS event viewer?

 

The FakeComm I referred was on the clients! I don't want to kick the drives out of my system, but the clients ones. I'm positively sure about the fact Avid released a doc (PDF) that tells how to remove them when them pile up in a workstation; not doing so can cause XP not to mount a partition, if I'm right.

 

Thank you!

I'll keep you up with this.

betatester21:

I thonk that the problem may be originated by a phantom client; the active FM says that the license allows 10 clients, and I've two left (actualy, it says that 11 clients are connected, but not all of them are workstations)

I think, that you'r talkin' 'bout fibre cannel clients, 'cause as I know they are the ones, that fm shows in monitor tool. Mby it's better to check portserver licenses with status viewer? By the way, had anyone experienced problems with shared disks and ethernet clients, when you have more than 20+ workspaces on fm?