unable to upgrade from vcenter 2.5 to 2.5u4 using sql 2000 database permission problem

[friedchicken]

Hi All,

I'm trying to upgrade vcenter 2.5 u0 to 2.5u4. The problem is when it was installed originally the sql user account had the 'sysadmin' role. The installer gets as far as the database upgrade stage and then stops with the following error:

please do not assign system administrator role to virtualcenter database user...... see 1003346 (this is a cut down version)

you cannot proceed any further in the installer. If i remove the 'sysadmin' privaledge it gets passed this but then gets the 'use evaluation license' screen which implies that its going to install a blank database as per kb1003052! i really don't want to loose my current database and historical data - surely there is a way around this?

can someone please help?

thanks.

[Troy_Clavell]

see this KB article with regards to the proper permissions

you need dbo on both the VCMS and MSDB

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003052

[AWo]

You need to set the "owner" role for "msdb" temporarely for the SQL user you use.

AWo

VCP / vEXPERT 2009

[friedchicken]

thanks for your replies - sorry i should have said that i have already set the sql user account as a db_owner for both the vcentre database and the msdb as per 1003052.

whats bugging me is the articles say you must not change the sysadmin role setting - but doesn't tell you how to get around it!

any other ideas?

thanks.

[Troy_Clavell]

but doesn't tell you how to get around it!

get around what? The requirements are what they are. You will not lose historical data when doing the upgrade. As long as you don't initialize the DB(which would wipe out the DB), there will be an option to retain historical data during the upgrade.

see Upgrade Guide around page 58

[friedchicken]

i'm just going by the important upgrade notes in kb 1003052 - it says i shouldn't change the sysadmin settings and also not to proceed with the upgrade if the evaluation box comes up which says it hasn't recognised the database correctly (which it does). other posts i've seen on the net people are saying its installed all blank new tables and they've had to strip everything and reinstall and restore from tape.

i'm haven't proceeded past this point in the wizard as i'm really nervous/cautious as to not wanting to toast the database!

[olegarr]

Execute the following SQL code twice - against MSDB and VC DB:

EXEC sp_changedbowner @loginame = 'YOUUSERNAME', @map = 'true'

[friedchicken]

thanks - i'll try to give this a go tomorrow. i'm by no means a sql expert - does this do something more than assinging the rights using the gui?

[friedchicken]

the permissions thing didn't work

we thought we'd get clever :- we created a new sql user with the proper database rights, created a new DSN using the new credentials and changed the ownership of the databases and agent jobs to this new user.

on running the vcenter upgrade it now went through properly and saw it had an existing database which it said it would upgrade. the database upgrade wizard said it worked correctly but then the installer bailed out when trying to start the vcenter services. we couldn't start the service manually either. on inspecting the tables in the database found that it had indeed created new duplicate tables under with the new sql user as the owner. result=broken database and vcenter

we needed to get a working vcenter so we ended up stripping it all out and installing again from scratch. we are going to install a new test vm to do a restore of the old vcenter and database into to use to get the historical data from -and maybe one day to try to get round this issue!

thanks to all for your input on this