VMware Fusion and Workstation continues to be another popular way for customers to run a VMware Homelab while leveraging a users existing desktop. In the early days of vSphere 6.5, the method to deploy the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) to Fusion/Workstation was less than ideal with a lot of manual steps. In 2017, the Fusion/Workstation team introduced native OVF support and that made deploying the VCSA much simpler, especially with the VCSA two stage installer.

Even though this is not an officially supported method from VMware for deploying the VCSA, the process has not changed for the last several releases and it just works which was great for our users. With vSphere 8, it looks like there has been a change to the VCSA installer that causes a failure during the Stage 2 configuration.

I was made aware of this issue from a colleague who was looking to setup a vSphere 8 environment using VMware Workstation.

Taking a look at the log file, he noticed the error was regarding the upgrade.import.directory OVF property not being set, which seems to be causing the issue.

# cat /var/log/firstboot/vlcm_firstboot.py_9117_stderr.log
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/vmware-vlcm/firstboot/vlcm_firstboot.py", line 167, in <module>
    main()
  File "/usr/lib/vmware-vlcm/firstboot/vlcm_firstboot.py", line 129, in main
    fb = VlcmFirstboot(VLCM_COMP, VLCM_SOLUSERNAME)
  File "/usr/lib/vmware-vlcm/firstboot/vlcm_firstboot.py", line 50, in __init__
    os.path.join(get_install_parameter('upgrade.import.directory'), "vlcm")
  File "/usr/lib/vmware/site-packages/cis/tools.py", line 88, in get_install_parameter
    raise InstallParameterException('Install-parameter %s not set' % param)
cis.exceptions.InstallParameterException: {
    "detail": [
        {
            "id": "install.ciscommon.internal.error",
            "translatable": "Encountered an internal error.\n\n%(0)s",
            "args": [
                "Install-parameter upgrade.import.directory not set"
            ],
            "localized": "Encountered an internal error.\n\nInstall-parameter upgrade.import.directory not set"
        }
    ],
    "componentKey": null,
    "problemId": null,
    "resolution": {
        "id": "install.default.failure.resolution",
        "translatable": "This is an unrecoverable error, please retry install. If you encounter this error again, please search for these symptoms in the VMware Knowledge Base for any known issues and possible resolutions. If none can be found, collect a support bundle and open a support request.",
        "localized": "This is an unrecoverable error, please retry install. If you encounter this error again, please search for these symptoms in the VMware Knowledge Base for any known issues and possible resolutions. If none can be found, collect a support bundle and open a support request."
    }
}

Using one of my previous blog post for guidance, he discovered a quick workaround to the problem by simply ensuring this variable is configured with a default value. After running into the problem myself and verifying the solution, I figure this might be useful for anyone looking to run vSphere 8 using VMware Fusion or Workstation, so here are the instructions to work around this issue.

Disclaimer: This is not officially supported by VMware, use at your own risk
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