Fresh install of vCenter Appliance 6.7 - getting error "A problem occurred while - Starting VMware Content Library Service..."

[COS]

This is an install of a fresh lab and fresh deployment of vCenter Appliance 6.7 with ESXi 6.7.

All machines have internet connectivity.

My domain controller is also the DNS server and DNS works fine forward and reverse/PTR.

Each ESXi host is time sync'd to the IP for pool.ntp.org [107.155.79.108]

The esxi hosts can ping the the time server...

I configured my Domain controller to sync time with the below commands...

w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:pool.ntp.org /syncfromflags:MANUAL

Stop-Service w32time

Start-Service w32time

The DC sync's fine....

The server I am using to deploy the virt appliance is also sync'd to with the same above method.

Below are my setting when deploying the virtual appliance...

All those settings gets me past the first step to deploy the virtual appliance to my esxi server....

Here are the virtual appliance network, SSO and ntp settings....

I also attached the logs from my 7th attempt.......lol

Here's the error message..."A problem occurred while - Starting VMware Content Library Service..."

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks

[NelsonCandela]

This is what the vami.log file (starting line 4176) says:

2018-12-30T06:56:29.577 [17788]INFO:cgiutil:id=getUpgradeStatus, action=query

2018-12-30T06:56:40.429 [17788]INFO:cgiutil:flow is: ['firstboot']

2018-12-30T06:56:40.431 [17788]INFO:cgiutil:firstboot: failed, 63, Starting VMware Content Library Service...

2018-12-30T06:56:40.431 [17788]INFO:cgiutil:getDeployDetails: firstboot: failed, 63, firstboot: Starting VMware Content Library Service...

2018-12-30T06:56:40.437 [17788]INFO:cgiutil:Response :

<response><locale>en-US</locale><requestid>getUpgradeStatus</requestid><value actions="enabled" id="status">failed</value><value actions="enabled" id="progress">63</value><value actions="enabled" id="details">{

    "progress": 63,

    "status": "error",

    "error": {

        "componentKey": "fb-infra",

        "resolution": {

            "localized": "This is an unrecoverable error, please retry install. If you encounter this error again, please search for these symptoms in the VMware Knowledge Base for any known issues and possible resolutions. If none can be found, collect a support bundle and open a support request.",

            "translatable": "This is an unrecoverable error, please retry install. If you encounter this error again, please search for these symptoms in the VMware Knowledge Base for any known issues and possible resolutions. If none can be found, collect a support bundle and open a support request.",

            "id": "install.default.failure.resolution"

        },

        "detail": [

            {

                "localized": "The installation of vCenter Server failed due to an internal error.",

                "translatable": "The installation of vCenter Server failed due to an internal error.",

                "id": "install.default.failure.message"

            }

        ],

        "problemId": null

    },

    "progress_message": {

        "localized": "Starting VMware Content Library Service...",

        "translatable": "Starting %(0)s...",

        "id": "install.ciscommon.component.starting",

        "args": [

            "VMware Content Library Service"

        ]

    },

    "end_time": "2018-12-30T06:56:28.398Z",

    "info": [],

    "warning": [],

    "question": null,

    "start_time": "2018-12-30T06:31:01.104Z"

}</value></response>

An unrecoverable error ... 😐 have you actually tried re-installing everything? And by that I mean you deleted *all* temporary files and errors and logs etc.? Usually the only thing that f*cks up most of the installations / upgrades are DNS problems but as you stated right in the beginning you most likely did everything correctly. Is there still some other network component included that you didn't take a look at, yet?

Best of luck

NC

[COS]

UPDATE:

I got frustrated and blew away everything.

I rebuilt and created my own time server in the lab. Time sync works for all VM's to it.

I started the process again and used the deployment "Tiny" just as before. All IP settings are the same.

I kept getting the same error but one time when I sat and watched the whole process, when it failed there I immediately hit the "Retry" button. It paused for a bit then it appeared to have continued on and finished the install. Surprisingly it deployed and was working.

So not being the one that stays with an ~iffy~ deployment, I rebooted the appliance and it came up with an error in the console.

My first thought was maybe the ESXi host is starved with only 2cpu and 8GB RAM, so I bumped it to 4cpu and 12GB RAM and redeployed and got the same errors.

I brought it to 6cpu and 15GB RAM and same thing then 20GB RAM and same thing.

I figured I made enough changes to the nested ESXi VM so I deleted the failed deployments and this time I selected "Small" in the deployment size and changed nothing else.

It worked. At this point my ESXi host has 6cpu's and 20GB of RAM.

I deleted it again just to make sure and it worked again. I did this 4 times for sanity sake and it worked each time. Rebooted each time a few times and no errors.

My SWAG is the "Tiny" deployment size might be starved when nested with only 2cpus and somewhere in the runtime files there's a hard coded default timeout value for trying to start the content services and with only 2 vcpu's it takes longer to start than expected when nested as a VM. Using the "Small" deployment has 4cpu's so in theory things start faster? Maybe?........lol

[COS]

On a side note, if you want to deploy the VCSA to Workstation 15, I followed this person instructions......sort of (it's a different language) and I was able to deploy the "Tiny" deployment and works.

https://www.mchelgham.com/installer-vcsa-6-7-dans-vmware-workstation-fusion/

[pjw1971]

I experienced the same issue using VMware-vCenter-Server-Appliance-6.7.0.30000-13010631_OVF10.ova file.  Changing the default setting from 'tiny' to 'small' resolved the issue