Essentials 2012 R2 Hyper-V Shuts Down Weekly

Despite the fact that Microsoft has given a green light to licensing Hyper-V under Server 2012 R2 Essentials, it is still a pain in the neck of getting it running smoothly. After a recent blog about installing ONLY the Hyper-V role here, I was confronted with another bug.

The short story:

Once a week our IT environment would lose the connection to the Essentials Server and I would find that the Hyper-V beneath it is switched down. After a short check in the event logs the following sequence was eye-catching.

Under ‘Administrative Events’: Event 14100, Hyper-V-VMMS, Shut down physical computer. Stopping/saving all virtual machines…

What? Why? We go to the ‘System’ Windows Logs to find at almost the same time a System Event ID 1074 testifying: The process C:\Windows\system32\silsvc.exe [computername] has initiated the power off of computer [computername] on behalf of user NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM for the following reason: No title for this reason could be found. Comment: Licensing Compliance Service caused a shutdown. Please look at the events under Microsoft > Windows > Server Infrastructure Licensing > Operational for details.

Wrong of course, but OK, at least there is a hint where I should look for, thanks for this, whoever wrote the code!

We go under ‘Server Infrastructure Licensing’ Event Logs and observe Event 38 stating: The Non-domain Member Check detected a condition in your environment that is out of compliance with the licensing policy.

As well as Event 57: The Non-domain Member Check policy detected a condition in your environment that is out of compliance with the licensing policy. This server can only be in a workgroup or be a domain controller.

Gee you must’a be kiddin’, boy. We are logged in on the hypervisor, NOT the domain controller virtual machine. A hypervisor to be a domain controller? Non-compliant? Nonsense!

Just to demonstrate what I mean, hear the overview of the Server Infrastructure Licensing logs from the hypervisor’s perspective:

And here one from the ‘real’ WSS 2012 R2 domain controller running as a VM on top of it:

Very well compliant ain’t it?

So through this final check I eliminate the option of Hyper-V communicating with the VM through a system bus, exchanging licensing information, and go looking for the ill-fated SILSVC service.

The problem with it is, you cannot simply stop or disable it, and do you dare on the first place, but that’s another long story worth a second blog.

So watch out for it 🙂

Update: here is the workaround.