Troubleshooting the Pexip Infinity platform

This topic contains a list of symptoms, possible causes and suggested resolutions for some issues you may experience when using the Pexip Infinity platform.

It includes the following sections:

For help in resolving LDAP-specific issues, see Troubleshooting LDAP server connections.

For help in resolving Lync / Skype for Business issues, see Troubleshooting and limitations with Lync / Skype for Business and Pexip Infinity.

For a list of devices that are supported by Pexip Infinity, including any known issues, see Interoperability.

Pexip Infinity deployment and upgrading

Symptom Possible cause Resolution
During upgrade, one or more Conferencing Nodes are stuck with a status of "waiting for calls to clear", but there are no active calls reported on the Management Node. A completed call has not cleared properly from the Conferencing Node. Reboot the Conferencing Node.

During automatic deployment of a Conferencing Node using VMware, the following message is given:

"Server raised fault: 'Current license or ESXi version prohibits execution of the requested operation.'"

You are using a version of VMware that does not support use of the VMware API, which is required for automatic deployment of Conferencing Nodes.

Either:

An automatic deployment of a Conferencing Node using vCenter as the VM manager fails at 22%. During automatic deployment, the Management Node uploads the VM image directly to the ESXi host using HTTPS on port 443/TCP. If this port is not accessible, the upload will fail. Ensure that all ESXi hosts on which Conferencing Nodes are being deployed are accessible from the Management Node using HTTPS on port 443/TCP.

A Conferencing Node does not accept calls even though it is powered on and is contactable on the network.

If time is not properly synchronized between the Management Node and the host server, certificates issued by the Management Node may be invalidated by Conferencing Nodes within the same Pexip Infinity deployment. As a result, the Conferencing Nodes will not communicate properly with the Management Node, causing calls to fail.

Ensure all virtual machines (i.e. the Management Node and all Conferencing Nodes) within the Pexip Infinity platform, and the host servers on which they are running, are using accurate times according to the public or private standard NTP clock.

We strongly recommend that you configure at least 3 distinct NTP servers or NTP server pools in each instance to ensure proper synchronization.

To synchronize time on Pexip Infinity:

  1. Synchronize time on the host servers (for instructions, see the relevant hypervisor installation guide).
  2. Enable NTP on Management Node.
  3. Reboot all VMs.

A newly deployed Conferencing Node does not accept calls and its last contacted status on the Management Node shows "Never", even though it is powered on and is contactable on the network.

After deploying a new Conferencing Node, it takes approximately 5 minutes before the node is available for conference hosting and for its status to be updated on the Management Node. (Until it is available, the Management Node will report the status of the Conferencing Node as having a last contacted and last updated date of "Never".)

Wait for the Conferencing Node to finish initializing.
I entered the wrong information while running the installation wizard.  

On server-based deployments you can re-run the installation wizard by following the instructions in Re-running the installation wizard.

Do not re-run the installation wizard on cloud-based deployments (AWS or Azure) in order to change Management Node configuration data such as its IP address or hostname. To change such data you must terminate the existing instance and deploy a new Management Node instance. You should only re-run the installation wizard on cloud-based deployments if you need to reset the web administration password (and then you should not change any of the other configuration data).

A new Management Node or Conferencing Node does not work. It was created by cloning it through VMware. You cannot use cloning to create Management Nodes or Conferencing Nodes.

Create the Management Node according to our instructions (see Pexip Infinity installation overview ).

Create all Conferencing Nodes by following the instructions in Deploying new Conferencing Nodes.

A newly-deployed Conferencing Node has gone into maintenance mode with the message "CPU instruction set is not supported; system will be placed in maintenance mode". The Conferencing Node has been installed on a system that does not meet the CPU instruction set requirements.

Do one of the following:

Dynamic bursting to a cloud service

Symptom Possible cause Resolution
No bursting nodes appear in the Cloud overflow nodes area of the Status > Cloud bursting page The cloud node instances are not tagged correctly. Check that the node instances running in your service provider have been assigned the pexip-cloud tag and that the tag value is set to the Management Nodehostname.
You see a status issue "Instance <name> (with IP <address>) was found, but no corresponding Conferencing Node has been configured".

This occurs when Pexip Infinity detects a bursting instance with a tag matching your system's hostname but there is no corresponding Conferencing Node configured within Pexip Infinity.

This message can occur temporarily in a normal scenario when deploying a new Conferencing Node and you have set up the VM instance in your cloud provider but you have not yet deployed the Conferencing Node in Pexip Infinity. In this case, the issue will disappear as soon as you have deployed the Conferencing Node.

You see connectivity errors in the administrator log while overflow nodes are being started/stopped. This is normal behavior. No action required.

"Not authorized to perform an operation on <instance ID or region name>. Check the policy created for the AWS user." error.

This means that there is a problem with the AWS policy document, or the AWS user is not attached to the policy. See Configuring an AWS user and policy for controlling overflow nodes for more information.

Joining a conference and viewing content

Symptom Possible cause Resolution

Participants cannot join a conference due to insufficient capacity.

  • When users attempt to join a conference they get a message saying "Participants cannot join a conference due to insufficient capacity."
  • There is an alarm "Call capacity limit reached".
  • The admin log is reporting "Participant failed to join conference" and "resource unavailable".

All Conferencing Nodes that are able to take the media for this call are at capacity.

  • Deploy more Conferencing Nodes in this location.
  • Move existing Conferencing Nodes onto more powerful servers.
  • Allocate more virtual CPUs for Conferencing Nodes on existing servers (if there are sufficient CPU cores). Note that the Conferencing Node will have to be rebooted for this to take effect.
  • Configure each location with a primary and secondary overflow location.
  • If a call is received by a Conferencing Node that is in a location that only contains Proxying Edge Nodes, that location must be configured with a primary overflow location that contains your Transcoding Conferencing Nodes.
For further information on capacity and how calls consume resources, see Hardware resource allocation rules.
The participant has dialed in to the Conferencing Node while it is still starting up and an internal capacity-checking tool is running. Wait for one minute and then attempt to join the conference.
The Virtual Meeting Room or Virtual Auditorium has a participant limit applied, and this limit has been reached. Increase the participant limit, if appropriate.

Participants cannot join a conference due to an invalid license.

  • When users attempt to join a conference they get a message saying "Participants cannot join a conference due to an invalid license."
  • The admin log is reporting "Participant failed to join conference" and "no valid license available".

If your Pexip Infinity reports an invalid license, this could mean that:

  • the license has not been activated
  • the existing license has expired
  • the existing license has become corrupt (this could occur, for example, if the Management Node reboots after an upgrade and comes back up on a different physical blade with a new MAC address).
  • Check the status of your licenses from the Licensing page (Platform configuration > Licenses).
  • Contact your Pexip authorized support representative for assistance.

For more information, see Pexip Infinity license installation and usage.

Participants cannot join a conference due to insufficient licenses.

  • When users attempt to join a conference they get a message saying "Participants cannot join a conference due to insufficient licenses."
  • There is an alarm saying "License limit reached".
  • The admin log is reporting "Participant failed to join conference" and "license limit reached".
There are not enough call licenses available on the system at this time. For more information, see Pexip Infinity license installation and usage.
  • Wait until one or more of the existing conferences have finished and the call licenses have been returned to the pool.
  • Contact your Pexip authorized support representative to purchase more call licenses.
An H.323 endpoint has its bandwidth restricted when joining a conference via a Virtual Reception, or when placing a call using the Distributed Gateway after first connecting to a Virtual Reception. If there has been a bandwidth restriction placed on the Virtual Reception, any H.323 endpoints using that service will not be able to subsequently increase their bandwidth, even after being transferred to a Virtual Meeting Room or using a Call Routing Rule that has a higher (or no) limit.
  • Make the call using a SIP endpoint or Infinity Connect client.
  • Do not place a bandwidth restriction on the Virtual Reception.
Presentations do not display full screen.

If the presentation being shared is either:

  • an application that is not in full-screen mode
  • a full screen image that is being sent from a non-standard aspect ratio screen

then the image being sent may have a non-standard aspect ratio. To send the image inside a standard resolution window (for example 640x480 [4:3]) or 1280x720 [16:9]), the endpoint may add horizontal or vertical mattes (known as letterboxing or pillarboxing respectively).

Ensure that presenters always either:

  • share their entire screen, or
  • share individual applications when they are in full-screen mode only.

Images are not displaying as expected:

  • they are being cropped
  • they have black bars at the top or sides

Endpoints send and display video images and presentations in various aspect ratios, most commonly 16:9 and 4:3. If there is a difference between the aspect ratios of the sending and receiving endpoints, then the endpoint and/or Pexip Infinity may crop the image or add vertical or horizontal mattes.

For more information, see Changing aspect ratios.

Main video on a Cisco E20 freezes and no presentation is shown when a VMR participant starts presenting.

The E20 still sends video as normal, and audio flows in both directions.

This may occur when additional video codecs (e.g. H.264 High profile) are enabled on the Pexip Infinity deployment, and if the E20 is called from a VMR and then a participant in the VMR presents content.

This occurs because more codecs are offered to the E20 than it can cope with.

 
Participants keep hearing themselves repeated back after a short delay. This happens in a conference with one or more other participants connected using Infinity Connect via Internet Explorer, Edge, Safari or Firefox, and who are using their computer's microphone and speakers. Internet Explorer, Edge, Safari and Firefox do not have adequate echo cancellation, and in certain circumstances may experience a delay in playing audio. When this happens, sounds played through the computer's speakers are picked up by the computer's microphone and replayed back to other participants.

Participants using Internet Explorer, Edge, Safari or Firefox should:

  • use a headset
  • mute themselves when not speaking
  • consider using Chrome or the Infinity Connect desktop client instead.

Participants using Flash-based browsers should also ensure echo cancellation is enabled:

In-band DTMF tones may not be detected if they are input too quickly. False detections can be caused, for example, by poor line quality, line noise and echo. This is best resolved through using out-of-band DTMF tones.
Participants are disconnected from conferences and "Backplane disconnected" messages are recorded in the administrator log.

VMware snapshots were being taken or deleted while conferences were in progress. Taking or removing snapshots can cause virtual machines to become unresponsive.

For more information, see this VMware knowledge base article.

Only create and delete VMware snapshots at a time of minimal usage.

Conference connectivity and TLS issues

Symptom Possible cause Resolution
Calls fail when dialing out to, or receiving calls from, video network infrastructure devices, such as a Cisco VCS or CUCM. Calls may fail immediately, or after a period of time, and SSL alerts are raised in the support log with an "unsupported certificate" description. Either the external system or the Conferencing Node is verifying the other party's certificate and it is rejecting the connection because the certificate does not have client authentication properties. Ensure that the certificates on your external systems and on your Conferencing Nodes contain "TLS Web Client Authentication" Enhanced Key Usage properties (see Mutual TLS authentication and client/server certificates).
A Cisco MXP intermittently puts a call on hold immediately after resuming it. This is due to a bug in the MXP where a race condition exists between the resume message and the session refresh re-INVITE message. Set the session refresh configuration on your call control system to a value that avoids this race occurring.
After upgrading to version 10 or later, some Cisco MXPs may no longer be able to connect over TLS to Pexip Infinity. This can occur if the endpoint connects directly to a Conferencing Node (e.g. because it is registered to Pexip Infinity, or it is using IP dialing). Add to your Conferencing Node server certificates some custom DH parameters that define a DH group of size <=2048 bits. See Managing a node's TLS server certificate for information about how to do this.

Pexip Infinity administration

Symptom Possible cause Resolution
A policy profile is configured but it is being ignored. The policy profile has not been assigned to a system location. Assign the policy profile to your locations (Platform configuration > Locations).

Log timestamps appear to be inaccurate or log entries appear to be out of sequence.

Time is not properly synchronized between the Management Node, Conferencing Nodes and their host servers, causing different systems to use different timestamps. This could be because:

  • Insufficient NTP servers or NTP pools have been configured on a host server or the Management Node (we recommend a minimum of 3).
  • One or more NTP servers are unreachable or have inaccurate time themselves.
  • NTP is otherwise not configured according to our recommendations.

Ensure all virtual machines (i.e. the Management Node and all Conferencing Nodes) within the Pexip Infinity platform, and the host servers on which they are running, are using accurate times according to the public or private standard NTP clock.

We strongly recommend that you configure at least 3 distinct NTP servers or NTP server pools in each instance to ensure proper synchronization.

To synchronize time on Pexip Infinity:

  1. Synchronize time on the host servers (for instructions, see the relevant hypervisor installation guide).
  2. Enable NTP on Management Node.
  3. Reboot all VMs.

How do I register Pexip Infinity to a gatekeeper?   You don't register Pexip Infinity to a gatekeeper. Instead, configure your call control system to route calls to Pexip Infinity. See Call control.
Oracle Acme Packet SBC has the error "Message Too Large".  

Increase the following configuration parameters on the Acme Packet SBC:

  • sip-message-len 16000
  • option +max-udp-length=0
VMware datastore is showing disk I/O alarms.  

Enabling SIOC on your datastores might help. For more information, see this VMware knowledge base article.

VMR Scheduling for Exchange

Symptom Possible cause Resolution
Users are able to use the add-in to generate meeting aliases, but when they send the meeting request they get an email response from the room resource with the message configured in the Reject invalid alias ID text field. By default this will begin with "This meeting request does not contain valid data, and cannot be processed." The VMR Scheduling for Exchange feature has been enabled on more than one Management Node and both have Exchange servers that are configured with the same room resource. This may occur if you have separate test and development environments, each with their own Management Node; you will be prevented from using the same room resource for different Exchange servers on the same Management Node. Ensure that each room resource is being used by no more than one Exchange server and one Management Node.
A user has changed, removed, or added an invalid meeting ID before the meeting has been accepted by the room resource. This ID appears in the format PXPS:-<xxx># or TOK:-<xxx>#. Remind users that they should not edit or delete this text, and use the add-in to generate it.

A user has added the room resource as an attendee, but without activating the add-in.

Remind users that they must always use the add-in to schedule meetings.
The Management Node was offline and did not come back online before the security token expired (usually around 8 hours). Create a new meeting request.
Users are able to use the add-in to generate meeting aliases, but when they send the meeting request no response is received from the room resource. The scheduling license has expired. Renew the scheduling license or delete the add-in from the exchange server.
The room resource has been deleted from the meeting request. Remind users that they must not delete the room resource as an attendee.
When a user attempts to activate the add-in, they get message stating that there was a Token Error. The security token has expired, or is not yet valid. Check that both the Management Node and the Exchange server are synchronizing their time with an NTP server, and that both systems are showing the same time.
The add-in button does not appear, does not show the correct image and/or there is an error loading the add-in.

The Conferencing Node or reverse proxy specified by the Add-in server FQDN does not have a valid, trusted certificate.

To check this, enter the FQDN in a web browser. If the certificate is not valid, a message to that effect will appear.

Ensure that the Conferencing Node or reverse proxy has a trusted, valid certificate.

The user's device cannot connect to the Conferencing Node or reverse proxy specified by the Add-in server FQDN.

To check this, from a web browser on the same device, attempt to connect to:

https://<Add-in server FQDN>/api/client/v2/msexchange_schedulers/<connector_id>/images/addin_icon_80.png

where <connector_id> is the ID of the Exchange server on the Management Node. To find the ID, select the Exchange server; the ID will be the number that appears between the slashes at the end of the URL. For example, if the URL is

https://testmgr.example.com/admin/platform/msexchangeconnector/1/

the ID is 1.

Resolve the connection issue between the user's device and the Conferencing Node or reverse proxy.
The add-in XML manifest file being used by the Outlook client is out of date. This may occur if an Administrator has changed the server FQDN or has re-added an Exchange Server without then downloading a new XML file and uploading it to Exchange. Ensure that after making any changes to the configuration of an Exchange Server on the Management Node, you download a new add-in XML manifest file and then upload the file to Exchange.

(Desktop client users)

The add-in XML manifest file has not been received by the Outlook client from the Exchange server. To confirm that it has been received:

  1. From the Exchange admin center, select the Pexip add-in and note the version number:

  2. On the user's device, go to the folder for the Outlook manifest files e.g. ..\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Wef\{uuid}\random_string\Manifests\ and check whether there is a file that ends with the same number:

Resolve the connection issue between the Outlook client and the Exchange server.

The add-in was specified as Optional..., and the user has disabled it. To check this for Office 365 users:

  1. Log into OWA as the user, and then select Settings.
  2. Search for Manage integrations.
  3. Select My add-ins to view the Add-ins page. The Pexip Scheduling Service should be listed here, and shown as On.
  • Re-enable the add-in.
  • Specify the add-in as Mandatory.
Other issues not listed above. Refer to Microsoft's Outlook add-in troubleshooting guide.

Infinity Connect clients

Symptom Possible cause Resolution
Participants cannot use Infinity Connect clients. Web App and desktop client users are presented with a message "Server error! Please try again". Support for these Infinity Connect applications has been disabled.

Enable support as follows:

  1. Go to Platform configuration > Global settings.
  2. Select the Enable support for Pexip Infinity Connect and Mobile App checkbox.
Participants attempting to connect to a conference using the Infinity Connect Mobile client for iOS get a message "Certificate Error. Please contact your system administrator."

Your deployment does not use valid, trusted certificates. Infinity Connect Mobile clients require deployments with HTTPS and valid certificates.

Install valid certificates. For more information, see Managing TLS and trusted CA certificates.
Participants attempting to connect to a conference using the Infinity Connect Mobile client for Android get a message "Unable to connect to the server".

The user has entered an invalid address.

Check the address.

Your deployment does not use valid, trusted certificates. Infinity Connect Mobile clients require deployments with HTTPS and valid certificates.

Install valid certificates. For more information, see Managing TLS and trusted CA certificates.
The user is attempting to connect to a reverse proxy that requires authentication. They are using Version 3.0.11 or earlier of the Android client, which cannot provide authentication credentials.

Users should either:

  • Upgrade to version 3.0.12 or later.
  • Connect directly to a Conferencing Node.
Participants using an Infinity Connect client cannot see the chat window. Chat has been globally disabled. Enable chat.
Guest participants using an Infinity Connect client cannot see the chat window, participant list, or presentation. Guest participants are not allowed in to the conference if the conference is locked, or until the first Host participant has joined using video or audio, or has joined as control-only and has explicitly started the conference.
Users cannot access the Infinity Connect Web App home page when using Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer may be accessing the site in Compatibility View. Ensure that the target domain is not in Internet Explorer's list of websites added to Compatibility View.
Users of the Infinity Connect Web App via Edge, Internet Explorer or Safari get no main video when connecting to a conference via a reverse proxy. Other conference participants see a muted camera icon in place of the participant's video.

To send and receive audio/video media, Internet Explorer, Edge, and Safari browsers need a direct TCP connection to a Conferencing Node (as they use the RTMP protocol and thus cannot use ICE/TURN).

For more information, see Using Infinity Connect from outside your network.

  • Connect over VPN.
  • Use a different browser.