Recently I had to upgrade from vCenter 6.0 U2 to 6.0 U2a because of this WebClient Bug (KB 2144934)

But there are many stumbling blocks I would like to inform you about!

I cannot say it enough, backup AND snapshot your vCenter before!

In this release there are so many stumbling blocks where the upgrade could fail!

Here are some examples:

Error 1603, Error 3010

After some upgrade intentions the “VMware Workflow Manager” Service did not start anymore. Look at the “workflow-manager.log”

In the log you can find the following (C:\ProgramData\VMware\vCenterServer\logs\workflow\workflow-manager.log):

016-12-17T20:32:46.713+01:00 [WrapperListener_start_runner ERROR opID=] [WorkflowService] -- Exception during initialization {}
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'jmxConnectorStarter' defined in class path resource [META-INF/spring/workflow-jmx-bootstrap.xml]: Instantiation of bean failed; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.BeanInstantiationException: Could not instantiate bean class [com.vmware.vim.workflow.diagnostics.jmx.JmxConnectorStarter]: Constructor threw exception; nested exception is java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Port value out of range: -1

My prefered approach in cooperation with VMware Support is the following:

1. Have a vCenter Backup
2. Have a vCenter Snapshot (In powered off state)
3. Uninstall the Antivirus Client (In my case Symantec Endpoint Protection), reboot  (VMware Support recommendation)
4. Clear %temp% Folder
5. Install any Windows Update and reboot
6. Install Process Explorer and look for “vmeventmsg.dll”, kill the process if it’s in use (VMware Support recommendation)
7. Install yourCD-Drive:\vCenter-Server\Packages\VMware-python.msi (VMware Support recommendation)
8. Copy all Installation Files to a local folder eg. c:\temp\install-vc60u2a\ (VMware Support recommendation)
9. Try the upgrade with the wizard

Even though I followed this procedure, the upgrade failed. Also the Workflow Manager Service didn’t start anymore. Without a reboot the upgrade went trough the second time.

puhhh 🙂

Hopefully this was the last Windows vCenter upgrade in my life! Continue with VCSA 😉