vCenter 6 Upgrade: 1603 Error

I completed our lab vCenter upgrades during this last post. A few weeks after that effort, VMware release vCenter 6.0u1b. Since there was still time to evaluate this release, I went ahead and tried to upgrade from 6.0u1 to 6.0u1b.

One vCenter went off without a problem, another vCenter was not so lucky.

During the installation, the second vCenter encoured a ‘1603’ error during installation. Most of the community posts and KB articles pointed to SQL permissions, which doesn’t make much sense because the vCenter 6.0u1 was working fine with SQL in my case. After opening a case with VMware, the TSE focused on this section of the vminst.log
2016-01-15 13:28:01.007-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: RunFirstLastUpdateboot: Told to run “C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe /S /C “”E:\Program Files\VMware\vCenter Server\bin\run-updateboot-scripts.bat”””
2016-01-15 13:28:01.007-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: Entering function: LaunchProcAndMonitorStatus
2016-01-15 13:28:01.007-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: LaunchProcAndMonitorStatus: Launching “C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe /S /C “”E:\Program Files\VMware\vCenter Server\bin\run-updateboot-scripts.bat””” in “C:\Windows\system32\”
2016-01-15 13:28:01.007-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: LaunchProcAndMonitorStatus: Launched process with pid 11312 tid 9572
2016-01-15 13:28:01.007-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: Entering function: MonitorStatusFile
2016-01-15 13:28:01.007-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: MonitorStatusFile: Started execution of process
2016-01-15 13:30:15.548-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: MonitorStatusFile: Other process terminated with 1, exiting
2016-01-15 13:30:15.548-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| E: MonitorStatusFile: Process exited with a non-zero exit code; no status monitoring so assuming failure
2016-01-15 13:30:15.548-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: MonitorStatusFile: called parse callback 0 times
2016-01-15 13:30:15.548-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: MonitorStatusFile: No need to wait for process to complete
2016-01-15 13:30:15.548-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: MonitorStatusFile: Process’s job tree still hasn’t terminated, waiting
2016-01-15 13:30:15.548-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: MonitorStatusFile: Wait on process’s job tree has completed: 0
2016-01-15 13:30:15.548-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: Leaving function: MonitorStatusFile
2016-01-15 13:30:15.548-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| E: LaunchProcAndMonitorStatus: Failure detected while monitoring status file
2016-01-15 13:30:15.548-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| E: LaunchProcAndMonitorStatus: Job still alive, terminating
2016-01-15 13:30:15.548-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: Leaving function: LaunchProcAndMonitorStatus
2016-01-15 13:30:15.548-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| E: RunFirstLastUpdateboot: Failed to run boot script: “C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe /S /C “”E:\Program Files\VMware\vCenter Server\bin\run-updateboot-scripts.bat”””
2016-01-15 13:30:15.548-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: Leaving function: VM_RunUpdateBoot
2016-01-15 13:30:15.658-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: Entering function: VM_RunUpdateBoot
2016-01-15 13:30:15.667-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: RunFirstLastUpdateboot: DEBUG: silentMode 0
2016-01-15 13:30:15.668-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: RunFirstLastUpdateboot: Told to run “C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe /S /C “”E:\Program Files\VMware\vCenter Server\bin\run-updatebootrb-scripts.bat”””
2016-01-15 13:30:15.668-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: Entering function: LaunchProcAndMonitorStatus
2016-01-15 13:30:15.669-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: LaunchProcAndMonitorStatus: Launching “C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe /S /C “”E:\Program Files\VMware\vCenter Server\bin\run-updatebootrb-scripts.bat””” in “C:\Windows\system32\”
2016-01-15 13:30:15.671-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: LaunchProcAndMonitorStatus: Launched process with pid 2748 tid 2824
2016-01-15 13:30:15.671-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: Entering function: MonitorStatusFile
2016-01-15 13:30:15.671-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: MonitorStatusFile: Started execution of process
2016-01-15 13:34:40.731-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: MonitorStatusFile: Other process terminated with 0, exiting
2016-01-15 13:34:40.731-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: MonitorStatusFile: Process exited with a ‘0’ exit code; no status monitoring so assuming success
2016-01-15 13:34:40.731-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: MonitorStatusFile: called parse callback 0 times
2016-01-15 13:34:40.731-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: MonitorStatusFile: No need to wait for process to complete
2016-01-15 13:34:40.731-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: MonitorStatusFile: Process’s job tree still hasn’t terminated, waiting
2016-01-15 13:34:40.731-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: MonitorStatusFile: Wait on process’s job tree has completed: 0
2016-01-15 13:34:40.731-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: Leaving function: MonitorStatusFile
2016-01-15 13:34:40.731-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| E: LaunchProcAndMonitorStatus: Job still alive, terminating
2016-01-15 13:34:40.731-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: Leaving function: LaunchProcAndMonitorStatus
2016-01-15 13:34:40.731-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: RunFirstLastUpdateboot: Successfully ran boot script: “C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe /S /C “”E:\Program Files\VMware\vCenter Server\bin\run-updatebootrb-scripts.bat”””
2016-01-15 13:34:40.731-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: Leaving function: VM_RunUpdateBoot
2016-01-15 13:34:40.871-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| E: wWinMain: MSI result of install of “R:\vCenter-Server\Packages\vcsservicemanager.msi” may have failed: 1603 (0x00000643)
2016-01-15 13:34:40.871-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| E: LaunchPkgMgr: Operation on vcsservicemanager.msi appears to have failed: 1603 (0x00000643)
2016-01-15 13:34:40.871-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: PitCA_MessageBox: Displaying message: “Installation of component VCSServiceManager failed with error code ‘1603’. Check the logs for more details.”
2016-01-15 13:37:45.576-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: LaunchPkgMgr: Telling child to revert transaction
2016-01-15 13:37:45.576-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: InstallStatus_SetStage: install stage: install-packages / revert-transaction
2016-01-15 13:38:50.160-06:00| vcsInstUtil-3343021| I: EndTransaction: Chain transaction 1 rollback result 0

The VMware TSE found an internal KB referening a 1603 issue when the administrator@vsphere.local is NOT a member of the SSO group DCAdmins.I added the administrator@vsphere.local account to DCAdmins as follows:

1. Log into the Web Client as the Administrator@vpshere.local account.
2. Click Administration.
3. Click Users and Groups under Single Sign-On.
4. Select the Groups tab select DC Admins.
5. In the bottom pane under Group Members click the button to add a member.
6. Add the Administrator@vsphere.local account.

I then completed the installation successfully and removed the account from DCAdmins.

The internal KB also has some steps to move the administrators group in the vsphere.local LDAP. I am not going to post these here since I didn’t need them