Upgrade vCenter 4.1 to 5.1 fails with: “Error 25004. Setup failed to create the vCenter Server repository.”

Problem

You’ve successfully installed the new SSO and Inventory service then proceed to upgrade your existing vCenter 4.1 Build 4.1.0, 491557 to vCenter 5.1 but receive the following error while upgrading the vCenter service:

Error 25004. Setup failed to create the vCenter Server repository.

You notice that when you execute the command within SQL Server Management Studio to check the database version, the result indicates that the database has been upgraded to 5.1 but the install fails and rolls back leaving you with an upgraded database and uninstalled vCenter.

Proceeding to rollback to the 4.1 database then trying to use the following KB to purge the old data from the 4.1 database:

Purging old data from the database used by vCenter Server (1025914)
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1025914

… yields the same results.  Changing the vCenter log size to Unrestricted File Growth:

… and rerunning the upgrade results in the same failure.

Solution

While a ticket was opened with VMware and the database was uploaded for their engineer to review, we did not get a response a full week went by so with a few trial and errors, what ended up fixing this issue for us was to upgrade our vCenter from 4.1 Build 4.1.0, 491557, which was quite an older build, to the latest 4.1 release, then upgrade it to the latest 5.1 build.

On another note, while we managed to get past the error above, we then ran into the following error:

Error 26002. Setup failed to register VMware vCenter Server to VMware vCenter Inventory Service.

It was easily fixed by backing up the contents in the folder C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\SSL, copy the contents of C:\ProgramData\VMware\Infrastructure\Inventory Service\SSL to C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\SSL then rerunning the install.