Month / January 2015

by Arvind Shyamsundar

Microsoft Mumbai Tech Community meeting on 31 Jan 2015

A community is a social unit that shares common values and what better than technology as a binding force. We are very excited to announce the launch of the Microsoft Mumbai Tech Community. Our goal as part of this community is to:

 

  1. Knowledge sharing by our experts here at Microsoft
  2. Create awareness about new product and services offerings and features
  3. Build a cohesive community

In line with this aspiration, We are kicking off the Microsoft Mumbai Tech Community with 2 expert sessions. If you are in Mumbai, India, please let my colleague Mahendraprasad know (details below) that you will be attending!

 

Date 31 Jan 2015
Timing 10AM – 1PM
Address Microsoft Corporation India Pvt. Ltd.
Training rooms Oak / Juniper
4th Floor, ‘Windsor’,
off CST Road, Kalina,
Santacruz (East)
Mumbai, 400098
Contact MADUBEY at microsoft dot com

Here is what our team is planning to talk about:

 

Presenter Narendra Angane
Schedule 10:00 till 11:15 AM
Topic Introduction to Power BI
Abstract

Power BI for Office 365 is a self-service business intelligence (BI) solution delivered through Excel and Office 365 that provides information workers with data analysis and visualization capabilities to identify deeper business insights about their data. Will see how we can use the below components for data analysis and visualization:

  • Power Query
  • Power Map
  • Power View
  • Q&A

Presenter Mahendraprasad Dubey
Schedule 11:30 AM till 12:45 PM
Topic Evangelizing Data Collection Strategy
Abstract

Data collection has been nightmare. Several time either we can’t collect data as it has performance impact on server or we miss data that needs to be analyzed. Data collection has been made simpler. Let’s discover different way of collecting data.

  • XEvent Metadata
  • Extended Events Tutorial
  • Finding Your Events
  • Actions and Targets
  • Demo
  • Q&A

We are looking forward to hosting you at this event. Do RSVP your participation to MADUBEY at microsoft dot com.

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by Arvind Shyamsundar

Exotic wait types: PREEMPTIVE_OS_ENCRYPTMESSAGE

Some time ago, we were discussing wait types with a group of customers. To demonstrate the waits-and-queues methodology we use, I showed the group the sys.dm_os_wait_stats DMV, and the results were sorted by wait_time_ms in descending order. On the top of that list was the PREEMPTIVE_OS_ENCRYPTMESSAGE wait type. At that moment I was not exactly sure what that wait type was and I promised to look into it later. This post is a quick explanation of the same.

It turns out that if the SQL client and / or server is configured to use SSL for secure communications, the implementation within SQL Server will use an Win32 API hosted within SspiCli.dll. Such wait states – where the SQLOS calls into an external DLL which SQL has no direct control over – are identified with the PREEMPTIVE_* label.

So in short, this wait type is representative of the time it takes to encrypt TDS traffic back to the client. Does it represent a problem if it is on top of the list? Not necessarily, and as with all wait types, it needs to be carefully examined within the context of the specific issue being investigated and co-related with other observations such as performance counters etc. In certain cases, if you strongly suspect that this is representative of a problem, you can always check if you have configured SSL for SQL Server or for the client, and test with that turned off (subject to the boundary security requirements of course!)

Till next time, have a good one!

by Arvind Shyamsundar

Error message “Copying cluster-resource …fssres.dll to C:Windowssystem32fssres.dll failed…” during SQL Server 2014 setup

First and foremost, let me reproduce the complete error message I refer to above: “Copying cluster-resource C:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL ServerMSSQL12.SQL14MSSQLBinnfssres.dll to C:Windowssystem32fssres.dll failed because the destination file exists and is read-only”

Investigation

I received the above error message while setting up a SQL Server 2014 instance side by side with an existing copy of SQL Server 2012. The setup caused the “Database Engine” component to fail and later it had to be removed before re-attempting setup.

The root cause of such setup failures is often quite easy to locate when you look at the setup logs, which are conveniently placed under the “C:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL Server120Setup BootstrapLog” folder on your machine. When I looked at the Detail.txt file from such the problematic server, I could sport the following section:

(01) 2015-01-04 08:09:34 Slp: UpdateClusterResourceAction: Resource type = ‘SQL Server FILESTREAM Share’ ResourceDllName = fssres.dll Source Location = ‘C:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL ServerMSSQL12.SQL14MSSQLBinn’ Target Location = ‘C:Windowssystem32’.
(01) 2015-01-04 08:09:40 Slp: Type ‘SQL Server FILESTREAM Share’ not found. Performing copy directly …
.…
(01) 2015-01-04 08:09:40 Slp: Failed to version-copy file ‘C:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL ServerMSSQL12.SQL14MSSQLBinnfssres.dll’ to ‘C:Windowssystem32fssres.dll’. Exception data is: System.IO.IOException: The process cannot access the file ‘C:Windowssystem32fssres.dll’ because it is being used by another process.
   at System.IO.__Error.WinIOError(Int32 errorCode, String maybeFullPath)
   at System.IO.File.InternalCopy(String sourceFileName, String destFileName, Boolean overwrite)
   at Microsoft.SqlServer.Configuration.Cluster.UpdateClusterResourceAction.VersionCopy(String source, String target).
….
Microsoft.SqlServer.Configuration.Cluster.UpdateClusterResourceException:  Copying cluster-resource C:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL ServerMSSQL12.SQL14MSSQLBinnfssres.dll to C:Windowssystem32fssres.dll failed because the destination file exists and is read-only. —> System.IO.IOException: The process cannot access the file ‘C:Windowssystem32fssres.dll’ because it is being used by another process.
….
Microsoft.SqlServer.Configuration.Cluster.UpdateClusterResourceAction.VersionCopy(String source, String target)

From the above, it is quite clear that the FSSRES.DLL already exists previously. Now, when I checked the file version it was clear that the existing version is of version SQL Server 2012:

image

On executing a TASKLIST /M fssres.dll command it quickly became clear that the process which has this DLL already loaded is the RHS.exe for the existing instance of SQL 2012. That instance had an Availability Group already configured hence the RHS.exe was loading the DLL.

Given that the DLL was already loaded by the RHS.exe, there was no way for SQL setup to update it. That is why the SQL 2014 instance setup failed.

Workaround

The workaround I had to use in the above case was to firstly remove the SQL 2014 Database Engine instance; shutdown the cluster service on the failed node and then re-attempt the SQL 2014 setup. Less than ideal, but till the above issue is handled in the setup, we have very little options. I have logged also a Connect item requesting the Product team to investigate this issue. If you think this issue should be fixed, please vote it up on Connect!