Migration to VCSA 65 from 6.0 fails

[hwaltari]

All,

I'm testing in my lab migration from VCenter embedded to VCSA. Deploying the VCSA appliance goes OK, but stage 2 fails at point where the services are started.

The error occurs at 5% completed, when Identity Manager service is being started.

This is the error I get: (line cut for readability)

Encountered an internal error. Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/vmidentity/firstboot/vmidentity-firstboot.py",
line 2018, in main vmidentityFB.boot() File "/usr/lib/vmidentity/firstboot/vmidentity-firstboot.py", line 349, 
in boot self.configureSTS(self.__stsRetryCount, self.__stsRetryInterval) File "/usr/lib/vmidentity/firstboot/vmidentity-firstboot.py", 
line 1479, in configureSTS self.startSTSService() File "/usr/lib/vmidentity/firstboot/vmidentity-firstboot.py", line 1141, 
in startSTSService returnCode = self.startService(self.__sts_service_name, self.__stsRetryCount *
self.__stsRetryInterval) File "/usr/lib/vmidentity/firstboot/vmidentity-firstboot.py", line 88, 
in startService return service_start(svc_name, wait_time) File "/usr/lib/vmware/site-packages/cis/utils.py", 
line 784, in service_start raise ServiceStartException(svc_name) ServiceStartException: { "resolution": null, "detail": 
[ { "args": [ "vmware-stsd" ], "id": "install.ciscommon.service.failstart", "localized": 
"An error occurred while starting service 'vmware-stsd'", "translatable": "An error occurred while starting service '%(0)s'" } ], 
"componentKey": null, "problemId": null }

The process won't go any further but must be restarted since beginning of stage 2.

What causes this and how to correct the error?

[JimKnopf99]

Hi,

could you please check this forum entry?

VC 6.5 Install failure - identity management service error on first boot

Frank

[msripada]

JimKnofp99 is correct.. You can follow this VMWAREKB for clear info on steps..

Click here

Thanks,

MS

[hwaltari · Accepted solution]

UPDATE 2017-03-21 I just got a confirmation from support that this is a bug, and has been corrected in 6.5b

Eventually I managed to migrate the vcenter to VCSA. It required quite a lot effort, though. I'll record the steps taken here if somebody else hits the same snag.

I did try to add the hostname to /etc/hosts as per the KB, but that did not help in my case. I tried that few times.

Status at beginning

- vcenter server gets address from DHCP (I know, but this is a lab)

- Update manager at the same host

- Embedded PSC

Steps done

- changed vcenter server to use static address

- create A and PTR records in the DNS for the new address

- check that previously used address from DHCP is not in DNS

- configured update manager to use the same static address

-- check registry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Vmware, Inc.\VMware Update Manager

-- check file "C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\Update Manager\vci-integrity.xml" for address

-- Note: I had ip address in registry key "VCServer", I changed that to FQDN

-- Note: Also the file vci-integrity.xml had an ip address, changed that to FQDN too

- restart the server (or all the services, if you want to go that way)

- make sure that DNS resolves only the static address, clear cache on server and the host running the migration application

- run migration application

- during stage 1

-- select dhcp for temporary address scheme

-- give the appliance a temporary hostname (eg temp-vcsa.domain.ad) <-- I think this is important

- after stage 1 is completed, do yourself a favour and take a snapshot of the appliance before going to stage 2

- proceed to run stage 2

With this procedure at second run the migration passed the 5% mark and completed successfully.

When vcenter address is changed, the esxi hosts may lose connection to vcenter: VMware vCenter Server IP address change causes VMware ESX hosts to disconnect