Mystic Slayer's Bloggie

When I started to work with SharePoint 2010 I've noticed that there are alot of issues regarding the User Profile Synchronization. Alot of people mentioned the following event viewer problems:

Microsoft.ResourceManagement.ServiceHealthSource
Event ID: 22
Level: Error

The Forefront Identity Manager Service cannot connect to the SQL Database Server.

The SQL Server could not be contacted. The connection failure may be due to a network failure, firewall configuration error, or other connection issue. Additionally, the SQL Server connection information could be configured incorrectly.

Verify that the SQL Server is reachable from the Forefront Identity Manager Service computer. Ensure that SQL Server is running, that the network connection is active, and that the firewall is configured properly. Last, verify the connection information has been configured properly. This configuration is stored in the Windows Registry.

ILM Web Service Configuration
Event ID: 234
Level: Warning

ILM Certificate could not be created: netsh http error:netsh http add urlacl url=http://+:5726/ user=MSSDEVIA\MSSFARM sddl=D:(A;;GA;;;S-1-5-21-3647457175-3930976156-3381717532-1106)

ForeFront Identity Manager
Event ID: 3
Level: Error

.Net SqlClient Data Provider: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Cannot open database "User Profile Service Application_SyncDB_1d4b979635654411b18ce834c5c0a76a" requested by the login. The login failed.
Login failed for user 'MSSDEVIA\mssfarm'.
at Microsoft.ResourceManagement.Data.Exception.DataAccessExceptionManager.ThrowException(SqlException innerException)
at Microsoft.ResourceManagement.Data.DatabaseConnection.Open(SqlConnection connection)
at Microsoft.ResourceManagement.Data.DatabaseConnection.Open(DataStore store)
at Microsoft.ResourceManagement.Data.TransactionAndConnectionScope..ctor(Boolean createTransaction, IsolationLevel isolationLevel, DataStore dataStore)
at Microsoft.ResourceManagement.Data.TransactionAndConnectionScope..ctor(Boolean createTransaction)
at Microsoft.ResourceManagement.Data.DataAccess.RegisterService(String hostName)
at Microsoft.ResourceManagement.Workflow.Hosting.HostActivator.RegisterService(String hostName)
at Microsoft.ResourceManagement.Workflow.Hosting.HostActivator.Initialize()
at Microsoft.ResourceManagement.WebServices.ResourceManagementServiceHostFactory.CreateServiceHost(String constructorString, Uri[] baseAddresses)
at Microsoft.ResourceManagement.WindowsHostService.OnStart(String[] args)

ForeFront Identity Manager
Event ID: 3
Level: Error

.Net SqlClient Data Provider: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: HostId is not registered
at Microsoft.ResourceManagement.Data.Exception.DataAccessExceptionManager.ThrowException(SqlException innerException)
at Microsoft.ResourceManagement.Data.DataAccess.RetrieveWorkflowDataForHostActivator(Int16 hostId, Int16 pingIntervalSecs, Int32 activeHostedWorkflowDefinitionsSequenceNumber, Int16 workflowControlMessagesMaxPerMinute, Int16 requestRecoveryMaxPerMinute, Int16 requestCleanupMaxPerMinute, Boolean runRequestRecoveryScan, Boolean& doPolicyApplicationDispatch, ReadOnlyCollection`1& activeHostedWorkflowDefinitions, ReadOnlyCollection`1& workflowControlMessages, List`1& requestsToRedispatch)
at Microsoft.ResourceManagement.Workflow.Hosting.HostActivator.RetrieveWorkflowDataForHostActivator()
at Microsoft.ResourceManagement.Workflow.Hosting.HostActivator.ActivateHosts(Object source, ElapsedEventArgs e)

Of course I've watched the different blog posts from different MVP's and others. But there still seems to be alot of different issues regarding the UPS of SharePoint 2010. Yet, I've found out that there are more issues as they speak of.
In my case the scenario was alot different then rights on the local machine or on the domain. The users had all the rights to perform Replicate Directory Changes on the domain, and yet I've had these errors.

I'd Visual Studio 2010 installed and it came up with the Jit-In-Time debugger with errors.

An unhandled exception ('System.ServiceModel.ProtocolException') occurred in OWSTIMER.exe [5630]

Application Error
Event ID: 1000
Level: Error

Faulting Application name: OWSTIMER.exe, version: 14.0.4762.1000, time stamp: 0x4bad920c
Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 6.1.7600.16385, time stamp: 04xa5bdfe0
Exception code: 0xe0434f4d
Fault offset: 0x000000000aa7d
Faulting Process id: 0xa58
Faulting application start time: 0x01cb2cacfed18e83
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\14\Bin\OWSTIMER.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\System32\KERNELBASE.dll
Report id: f3b92d5f-98a3-11df-b4fd-000c29240fea

So, I've opened a new instance of Visual Studio 2010 Debugger, and it came up that the internal Proxy Server needed authentication. I did get a 407: Proxy Authentication Required.

If you think you've done everything to the different blog posts you've writtend, and you can't find any issues, it can be that something else blocking your way to use the different SharePoint Application Services.

MS is not helping you with these kind of issues, but when you need some help, try to use Visual Studio on your application server, or server that is going to host the UPS service to identify which errors it comes up with.

If you can't use Visual Studio because it's a production environment, try to get a test environment in the same environment your production environment is in, and install there Visual Studio.

In the last couple of years I installed alot of different farms for SPS2003, MOSS 2007 and yet I started with the installation of MSS 2010.
Most organizations started using Virtualization software like VMWare ESX of other virtualization software. As far as I know I had to most problems with MOSS 2007 on virtual boxes. The most problems where database servers or badly configured boxes.

When you're using SQL Server or other database server you'll will see that when they are bad configured your farm is performing very very bad. Why?

One of the biggest reasons is that when you're running a database direct on a Virtual Hard Drive it will not perform as well. Why? Mostly the vhd's are using the same LUN on a SAN or physical disk. The best option here is to use pass-through disk to a LUN on a SAN.

Second when you're running a DB server on a Virtual Box and you allocate shared memory and shared CPU's it will also cost performance. This is also for MOSS or SP2010. You should use one-on-one CPU. So if you need 4 virtual CPU's you'll also need 4 cores and not sockets. For another example check your NUMA(Non Uniform Memory Access).

If you have a virtualbox with 8 cores and 32 GB of memory then your NUMA is 4 GB. So you can maximum allocate 4 GB of memory to a virtual server. If you allocate more memory it can cost your performance.

If your using VLAN's and you have multiple Virtual Switches ensure that your MOSS or SP2010 environment is using the same Virtual Switch. If the latency is higher then 1ms your performance will drop. MOSS and SP2010 will only have a good performance with a very low latency.

Also if you're running an AD server and this server is also running poorly your SharePoint environment will also perform poorly. SharePoint authenticates alot.

Most hardware performance issues are written above. Look at it when you're making SharePoint environment virtualized. 80% of the problems are the DB server of the Indexing Server of your SharePoint environment.