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Clients cannot registered to WSUS console

Recently I faced an issue with Microsoft’s WSUS update manager and the console on which clients are reporting. In more detail although clients were able to connect and communicate with WSUS server, they could not be registered on the console.

I tried many workarounds that I found online but non of them worked. By troubleshooting further I was able to detect the issue.

First things first, when you deal with such an issue try ping in order to verify network connectivity and also

If you are sure that network and port connectivity is in place run the below powershell command which will generate a log output on your desktop. Try to read the logs and verify the issue.

On my case the issue was a proxy that did not allow communication to WSUS web service which performs the necessary tasks in order for the machine to be registered on the console.

Below is the command to reset web proxy settings on a windows server 2016 machine.

Bonus content:

After the successful removal of proxy I restarted the windows update setting and it got stuck on a server with the state of stopping.

You can kill a stuck service on Windows with the below command on an elevated prompt:

I used wuauserv as it is the name of windows update service

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Extend Raw Device Mapping Disk – virtual compatibility mode on VMware

You can follow the below procedure to extend an RDM disk with virtual compatibility mode on VMware. As described in the article attached on the bottom, you can accomplish that either by migrating the RDM or by shutting down the VM and performing the procedure below. The article implements the shut down way.

The first step is to extend the RDM disk from storage. Find the UUID descriptor and provide some additional space.

Then you need to locate the VMware disk that you want to extend and record the SCSI controller and SCSI ID because it is needed on a later stage.

on my case SCSI target is 8

Then you should delete the disk from virtual machine. You can also select (delete files from datastore) as only the RDM pointer will be deleted and not the actual disk data.

After that you should rescan storage devices and volumes on the ESXi host and locate if the device has identified the new capacity.

in my case the new storage capacity is 150G

Then edit virtual machine settings and select add new device that will be of type RDM Disk

The next dialog shows the new disk with the extended capacity.

Click OK and be careful in order to add the same SCSI ID and controller as previously.

Perform a rescan inside the Operating system and the capacity will be available for use

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1007021

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Vmware Host returns esxupdate error code:15 – Check update manager log

I tried to update a VMware host through update manager and I got the below error through stage and remediation.

VMware indicates that:

This issue occurs if the /locker/ folder contains too many files aside from the /locker/packages (or /store/packages) folder. Remediation cannot happen as the disk does not have enough space.

/locker partition is the local Datastore of the host and in my case did not contain a lot of data except from the directory of packages.

The solution for this error was to remediate less updates and not all of them once. For example I could remediate 28 patches, but I performed that in two waves 14 on each iteration.

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2030665

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Remove Windows recovery partition to extend drive

There is a common issue on Windows to have a disk blocked from Windows recovery partition. In that way, if you extend the physical disk (virtual environments) you cannot extend from Operating system side.

Windows Recovery partition blocking C:\ to be extended

A recovery partition is a partition on the disk that helps to restore the factory settings of the OS (operating system) if there is some kind of system failure. This partition has no drive letter, and you can use only Help in Disk Management. In my case I did not need this partition and I was able to delete it with the below steps:

select disk 0 select volume 3 (3 was the id of my recovery partition)
select recovery partition in order to delete from diskpart

After those steps you will be able to extend your disk.