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Web console license error after 9.1 upgrade

We ran the 9.1 upgrade on our 8.5.1 Orion NPM yesterday. It was not one of our better SolarWinds experiences. After significant effort, we got both of our polling engines running. System Manager comes up fine on both servers as well. However, we are still stuck with a down web console. When trying to access the web console, we get an error that says "Orion License Error. License check failed." This is on both the main Orion SLX web console and our additional web console (on a separate server). We opened a ticket on this (#63890) and spent several hours on the phone with support yesterday, but they eventually said they needed to get the development team involved.

It is probably too much to hope that anyone else has seen this error and has a fix, but I thought I'd throw it out here anyway. I'll post a follow up whenever the dev guys get around to looking at this.

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kweise

Malcolm,

What issues did you run into during your upgrade? I'm still on 8.5.1 SP3 and I'm scheduled to upgrade to 9.1 Sunday morning. (I know support isn't available on the weekend, but I couldn't get approval to upgrade during business hours.) IIt sounds like we've got a similar environment to yours. We've got a main SLX server, an additional polling engine and an additional web server. We're also running the NetFlow module. If you have any hints or things I should watch out for, please let me know.

Thanks,
Kevin

mreitz

Kevin - I have had too many bad experiences with Orion upgrades (in particular, with issues involving reinstalls and having to get new license keys) to ever do an upgrade out of support hours again. Make sure you have your licenses available from the web site before you start. I had to call twice to get all of the proper licenses available on our account before this upgrade.

Besides the ongoing web console error we're still struggling with, we had two major problems.

1) First was an (undocumented, as far I know) dependency on the Windows Net.TCP Port Sharing service. This service is not enabled by default on our Windows 2003 servers. To get the installations to complete, I had to enable the service (set it to automatic start) and I had to change the service's "log on as" account to the Local System account. Without that service running, the install program would not complete.

2) As the configuration wizard ran, when it got to the web site config it would error out with a "Web Request for Orion/login.aspx failed, Error 401 Unauthorized" message. This turned out to be happening because we had the web site set to use Windows Integrated authentication and had anonymous access unchecked in the web site properties (via IIS Admin). After checking the anonymous access box, the Configuration Wizard finished. I went back and unchecked the box later.

kweise

Thanks for the info Malcolm. the net.tcp port sharing service is disabled on our servers as well. Can anyone from SolarWinds confirm that this service is required for upgrading 8.5.1 SP3 directly to 9.1?

We aren't doing integrated authentication, so hopefully that won't be an issue. I'll keep any eye out for your update after you hear back from the dev team.

Thanks again,
Kevin

tdanner

Yes, the Net.Tcp Port Sharing Service is required. Starting with Orion 9.0 we are trying to standardize on port 17777 (to simplify configuration for customers who have firewalls between their various Orion servers) for all of the SolarWinds services that communicate with each other on the Microsoft Net.Tcp protocol. Without the Net.Tcp Port Sharing Service, you can't have more than one process listening on the same port. The Configuration Wizard is supposed to take care of enabling that service if it is disabled.

fritcht

I have the same problem with the web console error - "Orion License Error. License check failed". I Have also opened up a ticket with tech support. They had me repair the Orion NPM install under Add/Remove Programs - repair. This did absolutely nothing. I'll follow up in the morning with them on this to get it fixed. However, the development needs to get their act together before releasing buggy code.

fritcht

Web Console problem solved!

Add the following local user accounts to the administrators group: IUSR_<server name> & NT Authority\Network Service

Open IIS Manager and right mouse click on the SolarWinds NetPerfMon website for permissions. Add the accounts SOLARWINDS_WEBSITE & IUSR_<server name> with full access.

Stop & start the web site.

fritcht

Well, the success was short lived. Although the issue with not being able to access the web console at all has been corrected, I am repeatedly being prompted to enter my license information several times during the day for the various NPM components and then everything works OK. The web console will display the "license check failed" message after login and not be accessible until I enter the license info for the System Manager. I am also prompted when lauching the Database Manager, & Advanced Alert Manager. I also noticed that when I launch the Configuration Wizard, it now comes up as "Evaluation Version" & "License check failed". I have not been able to determine if there is a pattern or correlation with particular events. I have opened another ticket on this (# 66131).