Recently I worked on a SharePoint 2013 VM for development purposes. This cloned VM contained 16 GB of memory which isn’t a lot for a SP2013 environment. To be able to work with the VM at a certain speed the Search service was stopped, but that didn’t speed up things as I was hoping for.<\/p>\n
Since we’re using VMWare the next thing was to check ‘Reserve all guest memory (all locked)’. This worked like a charm, even with the Search enabled, just for a very short time… I started to monitor the ULS. At once I noticed issues with the Distributed Cache, like<\/p>\n
The servername in the above message wasn’t the name of the machine I was working on, it still pointed to the machine from which this one is a clone.<\/p>\n
Checking the available cache host with PowerShell confirmed this:<\/p>\n
\r\n#Set context to cluster\r\nUse-CacheCluster\r\n#List all cache host services present in cluster\r\nGet-CacheHost\r\n<\/pre>\nThe cache host service listed will be the one at the ‘old’ server in an UNKNOWN service state, like:<\/p>\n
HostName : CachePort \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Service Name \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Service Status<\/p>\n
——————– \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 ————– \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0————<\/p>\n
<old_server>:22233 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0AppFabricCachingService \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0UNKNOWN<\/p>\n
Since a cache cluster is present the current server can be added as a cache host:<\/p>\n
\r\n#Stop the distributed cache service instance\r\nStop-SPDistributedCacheServiceInstance -Graceful\r\n#add the server as a cache host\r\nAdd-CacheHost -ConnectionString "Data Source=<new_server>;Initial Catalog=SP_CONFIG;Integrated Security=True;Enlist=False" -ProviderType "SPDistributedCacheClusterProvider"\r\n<\/pre>\nThe connection string can be found in:<\/p>\n
There were multiple cloned servers which had to be fixed and sometimes this message appeared:<\/p>\n
Service is already configured on this host.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Then run Remove-CacheHost to unconfigure it and proceed with the next steps.<\/p>\n
The next step is to register the server as a cache host:<\/p>\n
\r\n#register the server as a cache host\r\nRegister-CacheHost -ConnectionString\u00a0 "Data Source=<new_server>;Initial Catalog=SP_CONFIG;Integrated Security=True;Enlist=False" -ProviderType "SPDistributedCacheClusterProvider"\r\n#Check if cache host is registered successfully\r\nGet-CacheHost\r\n<\/pre>\nNow 2 cache hosts are listed:<\/p>\n
HostName : CachePort\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Service Name \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Service Status<\/p>\n
——————– \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0————– \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0————<\/p>\n
<old_server>:22233 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0AppFabricCachingService \u00a0 \u00a0 UNKNOWN<\/p>\n
<new_server>:22233 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0AppFabricCachingService \u00a0 \u00a0 DOWN<\/p>\n
The configuration of the cache cluster has to be exported and adjusted to remove the old server and add the new server:<\/p>\n
\r\n#stop the cluster\r\nStop-CacheCluster\r\n#If result:\r\n#Invalid operation encountered on <old_server>:AppFabricCachingService : Cannot open\r\n#Service Control Manager on computer '<old_server>'. This operation might require other privileges\r\n#and\/or\r\n#No hosts running in cluster\r\n#Just proceed: unable to connect to old_server which makes sense\r\n\r\n#export the cluster configuration so changes can be made\r\nExport-CacheClusterConfig D:\\CODE\\clusterconfig.xml\r\n<\/pre>\nThe cluster configuration file needs to be modified. The old server reference has to be deleted, while the new server reference has to be added when registering the cachehost<\/p>\n
Part of exported and modified configuration:<\/p>\n
\r\n<hosts>\r\n<host replicationPort="22236" arbitrationPort="22235" clusterPort="22234" hostId="114149731" size="819" leadHost="true" account="<account>" cacheHostName="AppFabricCachingService" name="<old_server>" cachePort="22233" \/>\r\n<host replicationPort="22236" arbitrationPort="22235" clusterPort="22234" hostId="1975933372" size="8191" leadHost="true" account="<account>" cacheHostName="AppFabricCachingService" name="<new_server>" cachePort="22233" \/>\r\n<\/hosts>\r\n<\/pre>\n\r\n#import the modified cluster configuration\r\nImport-CacheClusterConfig -file D:\\CODE\\clusterconfigmodified.xml\r\n#Start the cluster\r\nStart-CacheCluster\r\n#and check if the service is UP\r\nGet-CacheHost\r\n<\/pre>\nCheck if the service status of the new server is UP and the old server isn’t listed as cache host anymore<\/p>\n
HostName : CachePort\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Service Name \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Service Status<\/p>\n
——————– \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 ————– \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0————<\/p>\n
<new_server>:22233 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0AppFabricCachingService \u00a0 \u00a0 UP<\/p>\n
Check if AppFabric Cache service is started in Services and in Central Administration.<\/p>\n
In the ULS the following messages appeared:<\/p>\n
Calling… SPDistributedCacheClusterCustomProvider:: BeginTransaction
\nSuccessfully executed… SPDistributedCacheClusterCustomProvider:: BeginTransaction<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/ul>\n
And SharePoint is responding quite a lot faster than before!<\/p>\n
Summary<\/h3>\n
This post described how to fix Distributed Cache service issues on a cloned SharePoint machine where the cache host pointed to the ‘old’ server.<\/p>\n
There are different caches that depends on the Distibuted Cache service: Login Token Cache, Feed Cache, Last Modifed Cache, Search Cache, Security Trimming Cache, View State Cache, and more. Therefor it’s quite important and convenient when the Distributed Cache service works properly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Recently I worked on a SharePoint 2013 VM for development purposes. This cloned VM contained 16 GB of memory which isn’t a lot for a SP2013 environment. To be able to work with the VM at a certain speed the … Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[43,44],"class_list":["post-1715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sharepoint-2013","tag-powershell","tag-sharepoint-2013"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itidea.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itidea.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itidea.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itidea.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itidea.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1715"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.itidea.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1736,"href":"https:\/\/www.itidea.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1715\/revisions\/1736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itidea.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itidea.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itidea.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}