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Thursday, November 4, 2010

Problems installing VMware License Server on Windows 2008 R2 64-bit Server with Event ID 11920: “Error 1920. Service VMware License Server (VMware License Server) failed to start. Verify that you have sufficient privileges to start system services.”

I had to do an upgrade of vCenter from 4.0 to 4.1 for one of the environments we manage and came across a problem while trying to installing the VMware License Server on a Windows 2008 R2 64-bit server (the existing vCenter 4.0 was installed on a Windows 2003 R2 server). As you may already know, the licensing server is a requirement for legacy ESX 3.x hosts and because we still had quite a few of them in the environment I needed to upgrade, I also needed to move the licenses off of the old vCenter 4.0 server so we can decommission it.

Problem

During the installation and starting of the services, the error that would get thrown is the following:

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VMware License Server

Error 1920. Service VMware License Server (VMware License Server) failed to start. Verify that you have sufficient privileges to start system services.

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Solution

Long story short, the reason why it failed was because of the version of the License Server I tried to install with which I downloaded here:

http://download3.vmware.com/software/vi/VMware-licenseserver-2.0.0-27704.exe

I’ve also tried downloading another version that didn’t work as well:

http://downloads.vmware.com/d/details/esx_35_licenseserver_dt/dGViZGVoKmJkZXBo

After searching around, I finally found that you’re supposed to download VMware vCenter Server 2.5 (the full version) and run the License Server installation instead:

http://downloads.vmware.com/d/details/vc250u6/dGViZGpwQGJkZXBo

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Seeing how the full version was 625MB (zip file) or 854 (DVD image) download, I had to start it and step away for awhile to wait till the download was done.

Once you’ve completed the download, simply execute the VMware-licenseserver executable in the VMware-VIMSetup-2.5.0-U5-English folder to install the license server only.

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If you’re interested in the troubleshooting process, please continue reading:

Demonstration of the Problem

After successfully upgrading vCenter from 4.0 to 4.1, I went ahead to install the License Server that I found here:

http://download3.vmware.com/software/vi/VMware-licenseserver-2.0.0-27704.exe

The install was pretty straight forward:

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Since the next screen was going to ask for the license files from the old server, I went ahead to locate the licenses from the old server in the folder: C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware License Server\Licenses

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Continuing with the install, I switched back over to the new server and UNC-ed over to the old server’s licenses directly via the C$ administrative share:

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Once the window opened, I went ahead to copy them over to the desktop:

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Once they were on the desktop, I clicked on the browse button in the License Server installation wizard and selected the files:

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Once you click Next, you are presented with the window to start the install:

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The process copies and installs the files, configures the services and attempts to start the services:

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If you have the services console opened, you will see that the VMware License Server service is listed but in the Disabled state. The window above shows that the installation wizard makes an attempt to start it:

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The problem I encountered was that I would receive the error message:

VMware License Server

Error 1920. Service VMware License Server (VMware License Server) failed to start. Verify that you have sufficient privileges to start system services.

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If you review the event log, you’ll see the event ID 11920 with the same error message being logged:

Product: VMware License Server -- Error 1920.Service VMware License Server (VMware License Server) failed to start. Verify that you have sufficient privileges to start system services.

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If you were to click on the details tab, you’ll see the following:

-

System

-

Provider

[ Name]

MsiInstaller

-

EventID

11920

[ Qualifiers]

0

Level

2

Task

0

Keywords

0x80000000000000

-

TimeCreated

[ SystemTime]

2010-10-26T20:04:15.000000000Z

EventRecordID

907

Channel

Application

Computer

ULVCS02.unislumin.com

-

Security

[ UserID]

S-1-5-21-6776287-844912543-1737835142-6420

-

EventData

Product: VMware License Server -- Error 1920.Service VMware License Server (VMware License Server) failed to start. Verify that you have sufficient privileges to start system services.

(NULL)

(NULL)

(NULL)

(NULL)

(NULL)

7B37363730434633382D443845322D344345352D383231432D3744303032463934433530467D



Binary data:

In Words

0000: 3736377B 33464330 38442D38 342D3245
0008: 2D354543 43313238 3044372D 39463230
0010: 30354334 7D46

In Bytes

0000: 7B 37 36 37 30 43 46 33 {7670CF3
0008: 38 2D 44 38 45 32 2D 34 8-D8E2-4
0010: 43 45 35 2D 38 32 31 43 CE5-821C
0018: 2D 37 44 30 30 32 46 39 -7D002F9
0020: 34 43 35 30 46 7D 4C50F}

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Not a whole lot of help but at least that’s something being logged. I then went ahead and downloaded another version of the License Server (VMware-licenseserver-64192.exe) to try again:

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This build states that the version is: 2.5.0.64192.

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… but after going through the same steps, I was presented with the same error.

Demonstration of the Installation

Please see my other blog post for the complete instrustrions on how to obtain the proper version of license server if you’re migrating to vCenter 4.x.

http://terenceluk.blogspot.com/2010/11/installing-vmware-license-server-on.html

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