Removing a drive mounted as CD-ROM on the RSA AM virtual machine via vCenter console

2 years ago

Article Number

000067992

Applies To

RSA Product Set: SecurID
RSA Product/Service Type: RSA Authentication Manager
RSA Version/Condition: 8.x
Deployment Paradigm: Virtual Deployment
Hypervisor: vCenter

Issue

Under certain rare occasions, customers report what appears to be a drive mounted as a CD-ROM from their vCenter Console. This is suspected to be a drive that was linked when virtual appliance was imaged and was never disconnected as shown in the below figure:

(Fig. 1: Mounted CD-ROM)

The primary concern in this issue seems to be regarding the safety of removing/disconnecting the CD-ROM and the possibility of it impacting the dependencies of the Authentication Manager as it seems to be one of the many files related to the virtual machine's data store files as shown in the below figure:

(Fig. 2: ISO file in the VM data store)

The second concern, in case the customer wishes to remove the mounted drive, is that disconnecting the CD-ROM will not work while the machine is running, and if it was shut down and got disconnected then it can re-connect again automatically on start-up

Tasks

Take a snapshot of the device, this is crucial before carrying on further

1. Make sure that no drive is configured as an update source on the Operations Console. Check this by logging on to the Operations Console and selecting Maintenance > Update and Rollback > Configure Update Source, make sure CD/DVD is not chosen as an update source
2. Ensure SSH access is enabled on the instance in question. Check this by logging on to the Operations Console and selecting Administration > Network Access.
3. Log out of the Operations Console.
4. Open an SSH session on the instance in question
5. Login to the instance facing the issue as rsaadmin and enter the operating system password.

Note that during Quick Setup another user name may have been selected. Use that user name to login.
6. Run the commands in bold to confirm that the externally mounted drive is not detected internally via SSH or vm console of the authentication manager:

mount -a as root

login as: rsaadmin
Using keyboard-interactive authentication.
Password: <enter OS password>
Last login: Wed Jan 14 10:27:53 2015 from jumphost.vcloud.local
RSA Authentication Manager Installation Directory: /opt/rsa/am
rsaadmin@am5primary:~> sudo su -
[sudo] password for rsaadmin:
am5primary:~ # mount -a
am5primary:~ # exit

df -h, if no external drive is detected then output should look as follows

rsaadmin@am5primary:~> df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs        3.9G     0  3.9G   0% /dev
tmpfs           3.9G  4.0K  3.9G   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs           3.9G  8.7M  3.9G   1% /run
tmpfs           3.9G     0  3.9G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda3        99G   13G   81G  14% /
/dev/sda2       200M  140K  200M   1% /boot/efi
rsaadmin@am5primary:~>

cat /etc/fstab

rsaadmin@am5primary:~> cat /etc/fstab
/dev/sda3 / ext3 defaults 1 1
/dev/sda2 /boot/efi vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/sdb1 swap    swap    defaults        0 0
rsaadmin@am5primary:~>

Resolution

Concerning the dependencies of the Authentication Manager, all of that are compiled within the sda2 and sda3 drives as seen in the above code snippets, since the mounted CD-ROM is a separate drive and furthermore it is not detected internally via linux, it does not impact the dependencies of the AM and hence can be disconnected or removed.

Disconnecting the drive:
1. Attempt to disconnect the CD-ROM while the AM virtual appliance is turned on, this is expected to fail as the option to disconnect the drive is greyed out
2. If it does fail, turn off the vm then disconnect the drive and make sure to uncheck the box "Connect at power on"
3. If it still fails to disconnect, turn off again and this time change the drive to be a "Client device"

Removing the drive:
1. In case the above fails and the drive keeps reconnecting on startup, then there is no other option but to delete the drive, make sure a snapshot is taken and that the customer agrees to removing the drive
2. Make sure the instance is witched off
3. Delete the drive by removing it from the file field of the CD/DVD section of the virtual machine in the vCenter console
4. After deleting the drive try booting the AM and check for its operation by running the command in bold in an ssh:

/opt/rsa/am/server/rsaserv status all

rsaadmin@am5primary:~> /opt/rsa/am/server/rsaserv status all 
RSA Database Server                                                            [RUNNING]
RSA Administration Server with Operations Console                              [RUNNING]
RSA RADIUS Server Operations Console                                           [RUNNING]
RSA Runtime Server                                                             [RUNNING]
RSA RADIUS Server                                                              [RUNNING]
RSA Console Server                                                             [RUNNING]

rsaadmin@am5primary:~>

If anything seems to be out of the ordinary revert the snapshot and advise the customer to contact VMWARE support, this seems to be a recurring issue with VMWARE according to the below article:
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2144053

Notes

Customer might be concerned about deleting the drive and that it will not be recovered even by a snapshot, however according to VMWARE the data saved in a snapshot "includes all of the files that make up the virtual machine. This includes disks, memory, and other devices, such as virtual network interface cards", for more info refer to the details in this article:
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1015180

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