VMM Integration Setup with OpsMgr Fails

This deals with a scenario where you run the Configuration Operations Manager setup routine for VMM 2008 R2.  The setup fails at the Administrator Console stage with the following error:

<Problem>

"Setup was not able to retrieve the service account from the specified Virtual Machine Manager server.

Specify a different VMM server and then try the operation again.

ID: 10207"

I had this issue while setting up my lab environment for the book.  I’d never seen it before.  No matter what I did, it kept repeating and stuffed the schedule for a chapter, forcing me to move to the next chapter (after wasting 4 or 5 days).

I searched all over and found no help at all, but plenty of people who had seen this problem.  Some solutions included setting up the prerequisites.  I was 100% sure that I had done that: management packs, console installs, OpsMgr admin rights to the VMM service account, etc.  AD and accounts were all healthy.  I uninstalled and reinstalled VMM (retaining and reusing the database) and even created a new VMM server from scratch.

Eventually, I opened a call with MS PSS.  Within a couple of hours an engineer named Ganesh called me up – well ahead of the 8 hours SLA (nice!).  We fired up an easy assist session and went through all the steps.  We were both sure of a problem on the VMM side; OpsMgr was behaving perfectly.

Note: A handy troubleshooting step is to install a VMM Admin console on another machine and try that.  That can ID a cause of this issue – there appear to be many including dodgy DNS records and missing prereqs.   The setup log in the hidden (by default) ProgramData folder doesn’t give very much detail on the integration setup failure so you have to go through everything.

Ganesh wanted to look at the service account in ADSIEdit.  We browsed to it.  The first suspect was the SPN records.  SPNSETUP –L led us to believe everything was OK there.  We opened up the properties of the VMM service account and confirmed that.  However, when we expanded the service account we did notice something.  The SCP (it appears like a sub-folder in ADSIEdit under the VMM service account and is called CN=MSVMM) was missing.  This should be created by the VMM setup on the VMM server.

We reinstalled VMM on the VMM server once again.  Still no sign of the SCP.  This was a very unusual one.  Ganesh needed some time to do some research and to contact Redmond.

<FIX>

A day later I got an email from Ganesh.  There was a way to create the SCP.  Pop the VMM 2008 R2 media into the VMM server.  Browse to the <architecture>Setup folder using command prompt.  Run CONFIGURESCPTOOL.EXE –INSTALL from that folder.  This will create the SCP; I confirmed this in ADSIEdit.  I reran the integration setup and it completed perfectly.  After a while all of the VMM content started appearing in OpsMgr.

Note: If you do uninstall/reinstall VMM then make sure you patch it to the level it was at before.  Up-to-date VMM agents cannot communicate with out-of-date VMM servers.

Thanks to Ganesh over in PSS for your help!