You receive the following error while installing vCenter 5.0: “The DB user entered does not have the required permissions needed to install and configure vCenter Server with the selected DB….”

Problem

You receive the following error while installing vCenter 5.0:

The DB user entered does not have the required permissions needed to install and configure vCenter Server with the selected DB.  Please correct the following error(s):

The database user ‘vpxuser’ does not have the following privileges on the ‘VCDB’ database:

CREATE PROCEDURE

CREATE TABLE

CREATE VIEW

…

Solution

The reason why you are receiving this error is because the service account you’re using for the DSN to access the database is missing some required permissions.  These permissions can be set in the following 2 ways:

1. Set Database Permissions By Manually Creating Database Roles and the VMW
   Schema
2. Set Database Permissions by Using the dbo Schema and the db_owner Database
   Role

The former takes a bit more time because you need to manually create the database roles and assign them to the service account while the latter simply assigns the dbo Schema and db_owner database role to your service account. What’s interesting is that I believe option #1 was introduced in vCenter 5.0 because I don’t recall seeing this in the earlier deployment guides. I’ve always used the 2nd option but it’s obviously not as secure because VMware does recommend option #1.