Adtran Netvanta 7100 – The Number You Have Dialed is not in Service

I have a love hate relationship with our Adtran Netvanta 7100 PBX.  It is an all-in-one type of device that serves as router, POE switch, and PBX.  What makes this device so awesome is the amount of features you get at a low cost when compared to other comparable devices.  The web based graphical user interface is easy to navigate and allows me to administer just about everything.

Having said that, every now and then we receive helpdesk tickets regarding failed calls, dropped calls, ghostly rings, etc that make me what to call an exorcist.  To be fair, most complaints are due to lack of user training, settings and/ or features that were misconfigured or disabled and, occasional technical issues on the service provider side.

Not long ago we began getting helpdesk calls about callers receiving a recording after dialing the business number.  “The number you have dialed is not in service.  Please check the number and try your call again later.”  When I tried calling, the call would ring at the other end and someone would answer it; I tried this many times and it just made the problem seem all that more mysterious.  Eventually I was able to confirm that the recording was in fact coming up but not with every call.  It seemed to be more likely to pop up in the early morning hours.  Looking at the call logs, I initially thought that calls were not making it through to the Netvanta 7100 and that they were failing on the caller’s side.  But after I contacted the service provider and they traced the calls they proved me wrong and confirmed that calls were actually making it through but were getting a busy signal.

After the issue was proved to be on our side, the first thing I did was check the system time on all our Netvanta 7100 devices.  I have a manic compulsion to have the time set correctly.  Adtran engineers have already dismissed my suspicions that having the wrong date/ time set can potentially cause call problems.  Still, I revised the date/ time settings and thought for a second that had fixed it but I was wrong.

My next bet was to reboot the device as this has relieved other issues in the past.  And for this reason, I don’t believe the Adtran Netvanta 7100 to be as reliable as other PBX devices out there.  It works for us because we do not mind doing an occasional reboot.

Now this is where things started moving quick and confusion settled in.  A reboot got scheduled and everything came up fine but, afterwards the device kept on rebooting every so often on its own.  This was probably due to the system time reverting back to a previous date and time and therefore, performing the scheduled reboot yet again and again and again like an old Richie Valens record.  After I caught on to that fact, I canceled the schedule reboot and, just in case, updated the firmware from A4.xx.xx to R11.4.2.E; as you may have noticed, that is quite a big firmware upgrade and was long overdue.  Around the same time, I was monitoring the network for other non-related problems; doing so, I noticed bandwidth bottlenecks right around the time the recording was coming on for a test call I made.  I thought it possible that the bottleneck was causing the failed calls and put a bandwidth limit on all client machines.

In the end, I don’t exactly know what caused the “The number you have dialed is not in service…” message; I do know it is fixed though.

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Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) 12.1.5 Antivirus Exclusion – Windows Server 2012 R2 – Citrix XenApp 7.6

Antivirus exclusions are an important step in deploying server based technologies.  Organization’s performance needs are just as critical as security.  Antivirus protection on physical XenApp servers hosting applications and shared desktops can be a challenge when the appropriate exclusions are not set up because performance and availability can suffer drastically.  Some of the issues that can be avoided by exclusion include hanging user sessions, long delays at logon and logoff, long delays launching apps, server unresponsiveness, etc.

Looking at a deployment of XenApp 7.6 VDA on Windows Server 2012 R2 platform for a healthcare organization, the following resources were reviewed in identifying what to add to the exclusion policy in Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager.  The following links refer to best practices as recommended by Symantec, Citrix, Microsoft and in the case of a healthcare organization using Intergy, Sage.

(SEP) 12.1.5 Antivirus Exclusion – Windows Server 2012 R2 – Citrix XenApp 7.6

SEP_12.1.5_Exceptions

https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.TECH91070.html

https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2013/09/22/citrix-consolidated-list-of-antivirus-exclusions/

https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX127030

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/18439.terminal-server-antivirus-exclusions.aspx

http://www.millennium-mb.com/files/Sage_Intergy_EHR_EMR_New_Jersey_York_Medical_Billing.pdf

Note that the registry fix described in the first link is performed after the SEP 12.1.5 client is installed on the XenApp 7.6 VDA server.

The fourth link down refers to Antivirus Exclusions recommended by Microsoft for Terminal Servers.  We were unable to find an updated list for Remote Desktop Services on Windows Server 2012 R2 but some of the previous exclusions will still apply.

The same is true for Intergy/ Intergy EHR exclusions.  Previous exclusions for earlier versions of Intergy still apply for newer versions.

Lastly, while all of the previous file exclusion recommendations come from the product vendors mentioned earlier, it is worth noting that some exclusions will technically make your server more vulnerable to attacks.  Thus, antivirus software on XenApp 7.6 VDA servers should only be part of a larger, more robust enterprise security plan.

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ADTRAN IP 706 / 712 Phone Blank LCD Screen

The LCD screen on two Adtran IP 712 phones recently went blank.   Other than having a blank LCD screen, the phones seem to be working fine; i.e., phone calls keep coming in and are able to be picked up.  The functionality of buttons was not tested.

The Adtran IP 712 phones are accessible through the web GUI using the following formant http://192.168.XXX.XXX/admin.  FYI, the default Username = admin and Password = password.  In our experience a Reset and Factory Reset via the web GUI did not fix the issue.  On one occasion, one of the phones booted up normally but the LCD screen went blank again several minutes later.

We were able to resolve the blank LCD screen for only one of the Adtran IP 712 phones by deleting the User Acct and Phone Config and creating them again (we are using Adtran Netvanta 7100 PBX).  The phone was able to boot up normally after that and the blank screen is fixed.

On the second phone the same fix did not work and was eventually replaced.  The root cause is still unknown but suspect corrupt firmware and/or missing phone firmware on the Netvant 7100 PBX.

 

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XenApp 7.6 Slow Logon Performance – Hotfix ICATS760WX64009

On a XenApp 7.6 shared Server OS desktop, there is considerable lag when users are logging in.  During logon, sessions seem to hang for a good number of seconds on a black screen prior to being given access to the desktop.

A simple way of improving slow logon performance on XenApp 7.6 shared desktop is to install Hotfix ICATS760WX64009.  This diminishes Interactive Session time by a few seconds.

Hotfix ICATS760WX64009 is not guaranteed to absolutely cure a slow logon but does help if you are on XenApp 7.6 and your VDA servers are running VDA Version 7.6.0.  The hotfix linked herein applies only to XenApp 7.6; XenDesktop 7.6 VDA Core Services for Windows Server OS (64-bit).

Hotfix ICATS760WX64009

If you want to further improve logon performance in XenApp 7.6 and not afraid to get dirty look into doing some of what this fellow Citrix Admin posted:

A few people have had problems here and I’ve ran into similar issues in the past few environments setup using 7.1, 7.5, and 7.6. I never faced these problems in XenApp 6.5. Since this is like my third go-round with this and using fully patched (7.6.1) with this build thought I’d post my workings.

Initial logon time with Citrix Policies, Group Policies, Logon Scripts: 280 s

Disable Antivirus: down to 40 s

Create Low-Risk policy, disable read/write scans of low-risk, add userprofilemanager.exe to low risk, re-enable antivirus: up to 67 s

Made exclusion to UPM Logs on top of regular citrix recommendations: down 45 s and also cleared mclogevent errors for long logon/logoff

Enabled legacy graphics mode: down 37 s

Disable Profile Streaming (fresh build, fresh roaming profiles, and highly configured exclusion list for appdata): 31 s

Delete key {2c7339cf-2b09-4501-b3f3-f3508c9228ed} from HKCU\software\Microsoft\active setup\installed components during logon which got time down to: 26 s ****This item drastically improved my RDP logins to the server****

Found errors in group policy processing, fixed issues causing errors so no more group policy warnings: 21 s

Full uninstall of receiver 4.0 and cleanup of registry/files per citrix article, reboot, install of 4.2: times down to 20 s for logon (before responsive desktop). ****This item also fixed my issues with COM1 port mapping for MICR printing in testing****

So, Citrix protocol is getting me into the server in about 20 seconds now and RDP protocol is getting me into the server in about 30 seconds. Don’t think I can ask for much more. Thanks for everyone’s findings and posts.

David

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#citrix, #hotfix-icats760wx64009, #interactive-session, #publisheddesktop, #shared-desktop, #vda-7-6-0, #virtualization-2, #windows-server, #xenapp-7-6-2

Verify Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager Created Exception Policy is Applied to Client

Consider the following scenario:

You recently deployed a couple of Citrix XenApp servers. You created a new group in SEP 12.1.5 manager and modified an exception policy to exclude individual files, extensions and processes from being harassed by SEP 12.1.5. Then, you created an unmanaged client install package using that new group so that the exception policy would be included. You installed the client on the server and under User defined Exceptions the window is blank. How can you know for sure that the exception policy you applied to the group in SEP 12.1.5 Manager carried over and is being applied on the machine?

Thx to Reddit Symantec gurus we know that user defined exceptions section in the SEP client is for user added exception only and not the SEP Manager. Thus, that section will not show you what you configured in the exclusion policy created in SEP Manager and included in the install package.

To verify that Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager created exception policies are being applied to the client:

Open SEP on client machine and at the top-right, go to Help and select Troubleshooting from the drop-down menu that appears.  In the Management window, click on Export under the Policy Profile. This will allow you to export an XML file that you can then search for the exclusions.

Yet another way to verify that Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager created exception policy is applied to client is to open regedit and manually inspect those exclusions through registry.  Browse to the registry key: •HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SYMANTEC\SYMANTEC ENDPOINT PROTECTION\AV\EXCLUSIONS

Note: On 64bit window machines the registry path is: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\WOW6432Node\Symantec\Symantec Endpoint Protection\AV\Exclusions

https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.TECH105814.html

 

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