VMTN

Still fails at the same point 97%

So to summarize:

• You have forward and reverse DNS entries on the local DNS servers specified in the installer wizard (use nslookup to verify from your workstation; not ping)
• You have NTP available locally and the target ESXi host as well as the workstation from which you're launching this installer wizard have their times in sync (do not point vCSA at external NTP)

If these two bullets above are true statements, check that your vCSA ISO download is not incomplete by comparing the hash to the one posted on the my.vmware.com portal. A corrupt download somewhere is know to cause failures.

nslookup:

NTP local machine running installer

Host time:

They are synchronising the same time (hard to refresh and grab at same time:

Where do I set NTP on the vCSA before it fails?

I have changed the NTP on the local machine and the host to sbs2011.torgersens.local and verified the source is updating from the Windows machine.  I have also changed the primary DNS to the secondary and vice versa in the vCSA server although they both have the same records.  I'm running the install again with those changes applied.

Failed again at the same place doing VMware-perfcharts-6.7.0-11726888.x86_64.rpm 97%

Log attached

Ok, something doesn't match up here. This ESXi host where you're deploying vCSA to...is it physical or nested? How many CPUs are dedicated to it? How much RAM?

It's a physical HP ML150 G6.  Intel Xeon E5502, 32GB RAM.  I did get an earlier version vCSA installed 100% and claimed success but was never able to get the webpage to work with 503 errors.

I'm hoping to get a different server hardware deployed.  It's still relatively low spec but has 4 cores.  I'll let you know how it goes.

What you have should work fine. Something is still wonky here as this should be working. Why do you have two different DNS servers, again? Have you tried the deployment only specifying the one on the same subnet as the vCSA deployment?

Update:

Changed the hardware to a Lenovo TS140 with 24GB RAM and 4 core Xeon E3-1226 and the wizard flew through in comparison and hit 100% on Stage 1.  Carried on to Stage 2 which is where I couldn't get to before.  I can see now where the NTP settings for the vCSA go.  Nothing failed and only had to run the wizard once.  Was finished in 30 mins instead of 2 hours then fail.

I can't think of anything different on this machine other than the hardware.  It's the same build of ESXi and same installation files used to deploy vCSA.  Both hosts were fresh installs with no VMs.  The network settings were mirrored except for the IP address of the host.  Nothing different in DNS other than adding the new host and PTR record.  All I can assume is that there is some kind of issue with the hardware that was getting the installer into an error state.  The logs are frustrating as it says it can't do something due to the current state but doesn't give any clues as to what state the machine is in or should be in.