Troubleshooting: issues joining gateway to Active Directory - AWS Storage Gateway
Confirm that the gateway can reach the domain controller by running an nping testCheck the DHCP options set for the VPC of your Amazon EC2 gateway instanceConfirm that the gateway can resolve the domain by running a dig queryCheck the domain controller settings and rolesCheck that the gateway is joined to the nearest domain controllerConfirm that Active Directory creates new computer objects in the default organizational unit (OU)Check your domain controller event logs

Troubleshooting: issues joining gateway to Active Directory

Use the following troubleshooting information to determine what to do if you receive error messages such as NETWORK_ERROR, TIMEOUT, or ACCESS_DENIED when trying to join your File Gateway to a Microsoft Active Directory domain.

To resolve these errors, perform the following checks and configurations.

Confirm that the gateway can reach the domain controller by running an nping test

To run an nping test:

  1. Connect to the gateway local console using your hypervisor management software (VMware, Hyper-V, or KVM) for on-premises gateways, or using ssh for Amazon EC2 gateways.

  2. Enter the corresponding numeral to select Gateway Console, and then enter h to list all available commands. To test the connectivity between the Storage Gateway virtual machine and the domain, run the following command:

    nping -d corp.domain.com -p 389 -c 1 -t tcp

    Note

    Replace corp.domain.com with your Active Directory domain DNS name and replace 389 with the LDAP port for your environment.

    Verify that you have opened the required ports within your firewall.

The following is an example of a successful nping test where the gateway was able to reach the domain controller:

nping -d corp.domain.com -p 389 -c 1 -t tcp

Starting Nping 0.6.40 ( http://nmap.org/nping ) at 2022-06-30 16:24 UTC
SENT (0.0553s) TCP 10.10.10.21:9783 > 10.10.10.10:389 S ttl=64 id=730 iplen=40  seq=2597195024 win=1480 
RCVD (0.0556s) TCP 10.10.10.10:389 > 10.10.10.21:9783 SA ttl=128 id=22332 iplen=44  seq=4170716243 win=8192 <mss 8961>

Max rtt: 0.310ms | Min rtt: 0.310ms | Avg rtt: 0.310ms
Raw packets sent: 1 (40B) | Rcvd: 1 (44B) | Lost: 0 (0.00%)
Nping done: 1 IP address pinged in 1.09 seconds<br>

The following is an example of an nping test where there is no connectivity to or response from the corp.domain.com destination:

nping -d corp.domain.com -p 389 -c 1 -t tcp

Starting Nping 0.6.40 ( http://nmap.org/nping ) at 2022-06-30 16:26 UTC
SENT (0.0421s) TCP 10.10.10.21:47196 > 10.10.10.10:389  S ttl=64 id=30318 iplen=40 seq=1762671338 win=1480

Max rtt: N/A | Min rtt: N/A | Avg rtt: N/A
Raw packets sent: 1 (40B) | Rcvd: 0 (0B) | Lost: 1 (100.00%)
Nping done: 1 IP address pinged in 1.07 seconds

Check the DHCP options set for the VPC of your Amazon EC2 gateway instance

If the File Gateway is running on an Amazon EC2 instance, then you must make sure a DHCP options set is properly configured and attached to the Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) that contains the gateway instance. For more information, see DHCP option sets in Amazon VPC.

Confirm that the gateway can resolve the domain by running a dig query

If the domain isn't resolvable by the gateway, then the gateway can't join the domain.

To run a dig query:

  1. Connect to the gateway local console using your hypervisor management software (VMware, Hyper-V, or KVM) for on-premises gateways, or using ssh for Amazon EC2 gateways.

  2. Enter the corresponding numeral to select Gateway Console, and then enter h to list all available commands. To test whether the gateway can resolve the domain, run the following command:

    dig -d corp.domain.com

    Note

    Replace corp.domain.com with your Active Directory domain DNS name.

The following is an example of a successful response:

; <<>> DiG 9.11.4-P2-RedHat-9.11.4-26.P2.amzn2.5.2 <<>> corp.domain.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 24817
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4000
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;corp.domain.com.        IN    A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
corp.domain.com.    600    IN    A    10.10.10.10
corp.domain.com.    600    IN    A    10.10.20.10
            
;; Query time: 0 msec
;; SERVER: 10.10.20.228#53(10.10.20.228)
;; WHEN: Thu Jun 30 16:36:32 UTC 2022
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 78

Check the domain controller settings and roles

Verify that the domain controller isn't set to read-only, and that the domain controller has enough roles for computers to join. To test this, try joining other servers from the same VPC subnet as the gateway VM to the domain.

Check that the gateway is joined to the nearest domain controller

As a best practice, we recommend joining your gateway to a domain controller that is geographically close to the gateway appliance. If the gateway appliance can't communicate with the domain controller within 20 seconds due to network latency, then the domain joining process can time out. For example, the process might time out if the gateway appliance is in the US East (N. Virginia) AWS Region and the domain controller is in the Asia Pacific (Singapore) AWS Region.

Note

To increase the default timeout value of 20 seconds, you can run the join-domain command in the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) and include the --timeout-in-seconds option to increase the time. You can also use the JoinDomain API call and include the TimeoutInSeconds parameter to increase the time. The maximum timeout value is 3,600 seconds.

If you receive errors when running AWS CLI commands, make sure that you’re using the most recent AWS CLI version.

Confirm that Active Directory creates new computer objects in the default organizational unit (OU)

Make sure Microsoft Active Directory does not have any Group Policy Objects that create new computer objects in any location other than the default OU. Before you can join your gateway to the Active Directory domain, a new computer object must exist in the default OU. Some Active Directory environments are customized to have different OUs for newly created objects. To guarantee that a new computer object for the gateway VM exists in the default OU, try creating the computer object manually on your domain controller before you join the gateway to the domain. You can also run the join-domain command using the AWS CLI. Then, specify the option for --organizational-unit.

Note

The process of creating the computer object is called pre-staging.

Check your domain controller event logs

If you can't join the gateway to the domain after trying all other checks and configurations described in the previous sections, we recommend examining your domain controller event logs. Check for any errors in the event viewer of the domain controller. Verify that the gateway queries have reached the domain controller.