Who doesn’t love changing password right?
Since I own the SRM implementation, I was sent a compliance task to change all of the passwords.
With SRM there are up to five passwords typically:
- Password that runs the Windows SRM Service (this is helpful so that you can run scripts on the SRM server in the same context)
- Password used by SRM to talk to vCenter
- Password used by SRM to talk to your database (assuming external SQL)
- Password used for Array Manager to talk the storage array
- Password used to pair two SRM Servers (most likely the same as the one to talk to vCenter)
The password that I had problems with was the DB password.
I started with following the documentation, it states that you should go through Programs and Features, Change, then select Modify.
Before doing that, I figured that I should stop the service and changed the password by opening SQL Management Studio and running the following query
ALTER LOGIN <dbusername> WITH
PASSWORD = ‘NEWPASS’|
OLD_PASSWORD = ‘OLDPASS’
GO
I then went back to the documentation and attempted to modify the Installation. Once I selected Modify and hit next, I got an error.
In vmware-dr.log, the only error was this:
2015-06-02T12:45:22.582-07:00 [03476 error ‘Vdb’] Connection: Could not connect to database: -1
So the Modify Installer is trying to connect to the db, but it can’t connect because I already changed the password, and this Modify Installer is needed to tell SRM to use a new password. It’s so circular! There is no place in the documentation where it says to go part way, change the db password and then continue.
I saw a few tricks online, but I wasn’t sure if I could use those tricks with an existing database
I should open a SR and the TSE pointed me to the same commands but stated that I could use them with an existing DB.
This is the command and syntax
installcreds.exe -key db:dbname -u dbusername
This file is in program files\vmware\vmware vcenter site recovery manager\bin
Once you run that and put the new password in, Modify Installer will work and you can start the service.
Update: On 4 of my 12 servers I was not able to go the Modify Installer, after working with Support, I rebooted the SRM App server and re-ran installcreds. I also added another password to the list above (site pairing password)