This can also be titled:
OWA massively high CPU
Windows Update broke my OWA
My OWA Farm shows no machines
OWA: The server has encountered an error and administration has been notified
ETC…
So what is this all about? It is simply that OWA is broken and for some reason the server is pretty upset about it. (That statement is about as vague as the actual error that is produced) Lets look over how this actually happens.
Scenario:
OWA is installed and has been running for awhile with no issues, in fact you probably forgot all about it until a user comes forward and says that they can not access any documents in OWA and get a vague mysterious message that OWA is just not working.
You go to the server and log in. The server is slugging at around 95+% of usage. So where do you head first? Well of course to Task Manager. Looking at the processes you see that there are more Werfault.exe processes running high CPU than you have ever seen.
Now Werfault.exe is simply the Problem and Reporting functionality of the server but why so many. This is because the server is (for lack of a better word) hosed and the system is trying to report, resolve and basically screaming in pain. Quick spoiler: OWA broke the server not the other way around.
If it is hurting you horribly then feel free to go turn off the reporting service and if the processes do not die on their own then jump into powershell and push them off a cliff:
get-process -name werfault | kill
Now we can move around a little more freely without waiting, we use powershell again to find out what is going on.
Import-Module OfficeWebApps Get-OfficeWebAppsFarm
This is where we get to see the wonderful message:
Warning: It does not appear that this machine is part of an Office Web Apps server farm
Now look way down the list and you will see Machines. Does it look like this?
Machines :{}
Hmmm… no machines in the farm, now that is weird. Lets look and see if that is actually valid.
Get-OfficeWebAppsMachine
And again nothing appears. So we have a farm but no Machines, so how do we get this backup and running?
Solution:
If you had no Machines listed you will need to quickly create the Farm again.
Example:
New-OfficeWebAppsFarm -InternalUrl "<url> -ExternalUrl "<url>" -EditingEnabled -AllowHttp:$true
In the above example OWA is setup at Http not Https and we set allow editing to occur. Change it to match what you currently have. The good news here is the SharePoint is still setup to point to this URL, the IIS is still setup so there is no need to do anything at this point except to start testing.
What caused this?
Office Web Apps hates to be updated. When it is updated on a machine that machine is pulled out of the Machines listing. If you have only 1 Office Web Apps server like most of us then once the machine is removed there is no way to add it back into the farm. This means the New-OfficeWebAppsMachine will NOT work. This will only work if you have at least 1 machine listed. That is good news for people who have 2 machines in the farm 🙂
Can I still Update?
Of course, well kinda. As per Microsoft:
“Applying Office Web Apps Server updates by using the automatic updates process isn’t supported with Office Web Apps Server.”
So turn off those Automatic Updates ASAP and read more here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj966220
