Failed to install the virtualcenter agent service
April 2nd, 2008 | 
Author: After upgrading Virtual Center from 2.0.1 to 2.5, all of the ESX 3.0.1 hosts were disconnected. Right clicking a host and selecting connect failed after about 5 minutes with an error that started with “failed to install the virtualcenter service.” Turns out the resolution is to manually create a missing directory on each of the affected ESX servers. Without this directory the agent install process will fail. The issue is not related to VC 2.5, but occurs when upgrading to earlier versions of VC 2.x as well.
The directory in question is /tmp/vmware-root. If it does not exist then follow these steps from VMwarewolf to reconnect your ESX hosts to VC again:
- Login to ESX Server via ssh client as root user
- cd /tmp
- mkdir vmware-root
- Try re-connecting the host to Virtual Center
Apparently there is a cron job that is removing this directory whenever it runs.
Here is another method:
- Disable HA. Otherwise, the virtual machines might be forcibly powered down by step 2.
- At the service console, issue
service mgmt-vmware restart- At the service console, issue
service vmware-vpxa restart- Reconnect the virtual machines to VirtualCenter.
- Attempt to re-enable HA within VirtualCenter. If this doesn’t work, this means that vpxa did not install properly.
- At the service console, issue
rpm -qa | grep vpxa- At the service console, issue “rpm -e” on the rpm file that displayed in the previous command.
rpm -e <rpm from step 6>- Reconnect the virtual machines in the usual manner within VirtualCenter.
- Re-enable HA.
At least I did not have a VMs reboot unexpectedly this time.
VMware Communities: Failed to install the virtualcenter … is a thread containing more great troubleshooting for this problem.
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