AppFabric 1.1 and Windows 8 Consumer Preview

Question

Hi,

I've been working with a customer project in the last months and this project uses a lot Windows AppFabric Cache. Recently we updated to AppFabric cache 1.1 and everything was working amazingly fine, but...

I got a new laptop for my job and was thinking about installing Win8 CP as my main operating system, I love it, so I tried to do some tests in a VM to see if AppFabric cache can work in Win8 CP. The official response from MS is "AppFabric is not supported in Win8 and we would tell you how to run it when Win8 is released" and of course that is not a nice answer for me, so I tried... and failed...

After installing .Net 3.5SP1 and latest updates AppFabric cache was installed and configured without any problem in my Win8 machine using my local user and a XML provider in a shared folder, I gave permissions and everything to that folder...

The first problem is that the Cache Administrator Console answer back with this message every time I open it:

Use-CacheCluster : ErrorCode<ERRCAdmin040>:SubStatus<ES0001>:Failed to connect
to hosts in the cluster
At line:1 char:46
+ Import-Module DistributedCacheAdministration;Use-CacheCluster
+                                              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [Use-CacheCluster], DataCacheE
   xception
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.DataCacheExc
   eption,Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.Commands.UseCacheClusterCommand

PS C:\Windows\system32>

But I can start the cache cluster without any problem, but I found sort of weird the answer from the cache cluster:

PS C:\Windows\system32> start-cachecluster

HostName : CachePort Service Name            Service Status Version Info
-------------------- ------------            -------------- ------------
win8:22233           AppFabricCachingService UP             0 [0,0][0,0]


PS C:\Windows\system32>

See the version info? looks like something is wrong, and yes, something is wrong... I cannot create a cache:

PS C:\Windows\system32> new-cache IPE
New-Cache : Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
At line:1 char:1
+ new-cache IPE
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [New-Cache], NullReferenceExce
   ption
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.NullReferenceException,Microsoft.Applicat
   ionServer.Caching.Commands.NewCacheCommand

PS C:\Windows\system32>

And pretty much that's all...

I tried everything I could find in the internet:

• Starting the Remote Registry Service
• Modifying the host file in windows/system32/drivers/etc/host to place an explicit entry to localhost and my machine name
• Checking permissions
• Installing updates
• Opening firewall rules

netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group="Windows Server AppFabric: AppFabric Caching Service" new enable=Yes
netsh advfirewall firewall set rule name="Remote Service Management (RPC)" profile=domain new enable=Yes
netsh advfirewall firewall set rule name="Remote Service Management (RPC-EPMAP)" profile=domain new enable=Yes
netsh advfirewall firewall set rule name="Remote Service Management (NP-In)" profile=domain new enable=Yes

And still getting the same problem... I have no idea where to start or continue finding the problem... I would really appreciate any help, and yes, would be really really hard for me to wait until Win8 official release.

Answer 1

Hi cprieto, I too faced the same problem. Resolved by starting the remote registry service from services.msc of primary machine and other machines in the cluster and restart the cache cluster from power shell cmd promt.

Better make the remote registry service as automatic, instead of manual.

Hope it helps!

Answer 2

Actually I tried that before posting the question (it is in my list of 'things I already tried' in the question). I have no idea why is not working in my case :(

Answer 3

Use-cachecluster errors do imply rest of the admin cmdlets wont work as expected (though nullref instead of an error msg is bad). Nonetheless this problem shouldn't be specific to win8.

Use-cachecluster tries to Ping the servers, hope that is not blocked. Also make sure server's registry is accessible from admin machine. If these didn't help, can you post the stacktrace after use-cachecluster error? Last exception stacktrace can be captured with $error[0].Exception.ToString()

Answer 4

One more clarification :

Just to confirm , did you reopen the admin console OR did Use-CacheCluster after you started the 'Remote Registry' service ? If not can you please try this and check issue exists?

Thanks

Arun

---

arunks

Answer 5

I am seeing the same issue on official release of Windows 8.  Driving me crazy.  Did you ever get this resolved?