Windows vCenter Server 6.0U2 upgrade to 6.0U2a fails with error 3010
Last Updated: 11/2/17(!) NOTE: Always make a snapshot of vCenter before you upgrade, after success be sure to delete the snapshot!!
Problem:
You try to upgrade VMware vCenter 6.0 Update 2 (U2), on your Windows server, to vCenter 6.0 Update 2a (U2a), but you get error 3010 and vcenter rolls back.
Installation of component VMware vCenter Server failed with error code 3010. Check the logs for more details.
after setup failure, your temp folder will contain file "pkgmgr-comp-msi.log" which will have a log entry that says: MainEngineThread is returning 3010
Cause:
The vCenter server package cannot update the file "vmeventmsg.dll" because it is in use. This means that it needs a reboot to replace this file. However, the main setup wizard (not the individual packages setup) appear to not tolerate the vCenter package needing a reboot. This causes the main setup to error out and rollback.
Solution:
There appears to be multiple potential solutions:
1) Rename File
Browse to c:\Program Files\VMware\vCenter Server\vpxd\. rename vmeventmsg.dll to vmeventmsg.dll.old. Then copy the same file and rename it back to the original name. This will leave you with two exact files in the folder, but one of them will end in ".old".
2) Kill the process that has the file open.
If you use process exporler and the search function you can locate the exact process (mine was svchost.exe PID 740) that has the .dll file open. you can then kill the process at the right moment and the upgrade should succeed. I was going to do this until I noticed that the eventviewer service was also being ran inside that process. This should still work, but you may miss a few seconds of event logs.
After understanding one of the solutions above, try the vCenter upgrade again. I suggest you clean out your %temp% folder before you start to make finding the setup logs easier in case you need them.
UPDATE: 11/2/2017
VMware article about this issue: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2149266
also, manuall uninstall of python (and syslog collector) and reinstall from latest vcenter ISO, then a reboot, before vcenter upgrade. may help.
Source:
Windows vCenter Server 6.0U2 upgrade to 6.0U2a fails | VMware Communities
https://communities.vmware.com/message/2641929?tstart=0
