Upgrading VCSA 6.7 to VCSA 8 fail! – “Encountered an internal error”

I was upgrading a customer’s vCenter Server from version 6.7 to 8. While the upgrade is supported, I encountered warnings (but no errors) during the pre-checks in stage 2. I ignored these warnings and proceeded, which resulted in an upgrade error.

Encountered an internal error. Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/vmidentity/firstboot/vmidentity-firstboot.py", line 1175, in main vmidentityFB.boot() File "/usr/lib/vmidentity/firstboot/vmidentity-firstboot.py", line 273, in boot self.configureSTS(self.__stsRetryCount, self.__stsRetryInterval) File "/usr/lib/vmidentity/firstboot/vmidentity-firstboot.py", line 797, in configureSTS self.startSTSService() File "/usr/lib/vmidentity/firstboot/vmidentity-firstboot.py", line 757, in startSTSService returnCode = self.startService(self.__sts_service_name) File "/usr/lib/vmidentity/firstboot/vmidentity-firstboot.py", line 78, in startService update_services_runstate("start", None, False, False, svc_names=[svc_name]) File "/usr/lib/vmware/site-packages/cis/svcsController.py", line 1122, in update_services_runstate _update_services_runstate_svclist('start', svc_nodenames,  and....

It is similar to this KB but I have checked DNS again and it was not a DNS problem. I did deploy the vCenter appliance once again. This time, at stage two, I took a closer look and noticed the warnings I had skipped previously.

• SSL Trust certificate does not match the current MACHINE_SSL_CERT for one of the service registrations
• A legacy service registrations for SSO service has been found to still use Port 7444

A legacy service is a service that has been migrated from previous versions of vCenter.

You will find here more information about these warnings, https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/79741, resolving these before upgrading is recommended to avoid potential failures.

The solution is easy! using a Doctor! yeah! learn more about lsdoctor tool here. Now let’s go to the solution:

1- Make sure you have a backup from your vCenter.

2- Make a snapshot from vCenter

3- Download the zip from this link.

4- Unzip the downloaded file in a folder like tmp and make sure you are in lsdoctor directory

unzip lsdoctor-240201.zip

5- To correct the SSL trust mismatch issues in the lookup service, run the following command:

python lsdoctor.py -t

6- To clean up any stale configurations left over from the previous upgrade and version, run the following command:

7- Stop and start the vCenter services.

service-control --stop --all
service-control --start --all

8- Continue to your upgrade! That worked perfectly for me!

Hope this is informative for you!