Yet another 1603 error during vCenter installation

[mulcas]

Hi all,

Ok, there are posts about everywhere but most of these are related to updating from old versions of vCenter to 6.0 or 6.5.

System:

Window Server 2016

vCenter 6.5 (latest version/update)

I am using a VCSA from my lab to manage the server I have created for this infrastructure; I have installed from scratch AD server and SQL server for vCenter (and Horizon View in the future), yet I keep getting two error during the installation:

The first one is about vSAN: vmware vsan health service failed firstboot. I can manage to skip this one and the installation continues,

Then I get the error 1603: Installation of component VCSServiceManager failed with error code '1603'. Check the logs for more details.

I have .NET 3.5 installed and I have followed almost al KB about this issue, but again, most of them are about updating the system, and the solution is to stop some specific services from vCenter, but this is not my case. Also, still confused about the vSAN error, not sure why this error should appear, it is a fresh installation!

vCenter have all the permissions as admin from the domain controller and for the database. I moved vCenter installation files to another folder as some suggested (C:\Temp), no solution.

I have been through these post and KB:

Vsphere 6.5 U1 update on Windows fails

VMware Knowledge Base

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/834484/you-receive-an-error-1603-a-fatal-error-occurred-dur...

I am pretty sure that should be something easy to check... but what? I have tried this installation almost 5 times already. Help will be much appreciated.

Regards,

mulcas

[daphnissov]

Just out of curiosity, why install vCenter 6.5 on Windows rather than deploy another vCSA like you have in your lab?

[mulcas]

Hi,

Good question. Because I prefer to keep things simple, I am going to need to install View Composer and don't want stand-alone server for that, will be more things to manage for a small deployment.

Cheers!

[mulcas · Accepted solution]

I solved the issue. But not sure about the root cause.

I delete and create a new VM for vCenter, this time installed .NET 3.5 first, before installing SQL client. Also, change the vCenter database size from 8M to 10M. Just did that.