vCenter Update Failed Fix and Reset Banner Error

I wanted to post a quick post regarding an error received in the lab environment when updating a vCenter Server appliance that I hadn’t logged into in quite a while. There are already a few posts when ones who have encountered this issue, however, hopefully this post will help to give visibility to the reason for the error and the fix. When performing updates on a VCSA appliance, you may encounter the error with vCenter Updated Failed Fix and reset banner error. What is this error? What causes it? What is the resolution?

vCenter Update Failed Fix and Reset Banner Error

First of all, what do you see with this particular error? I had logged into my vCenter Server appliance VAMI interface and initiated an update of the appliance through the interface. I had kicked this off and walked away from the appliance. From what I could tell, the update was successful.

Upon navigating back to the VCSA appliance web interface, the following error was displayed:

vCenter error Update Failed Fix and Reset Banner

So the error is very non-descriptive except that the update to the vCenter appliance failed in some way.

The Resolution to Failed vCenter Update

There is actually a very simple resolution to this error that is encountered in the vCenter Server update that leads to the error message displayed in the browser.

As it turns out, this error often is related to an expired vCenter root password. So there are two things you need to do to get back up and running with your VCSA appliance:

• Change the root password
• Reinstall the VCSA appliance updates

SSH into your VCSA appliance. First, you will want to change your root password. This can be done with the simple command:

1. passwd root

You will prompted to enter the new password and then confirm the new password by retyping it.

Next, you will need to back out of the bash shell if you are there. Once you are there, use the following command to initiate the software updates to your VCSA appliance:

1. software-packages install --url --acceptEulas

You will see the update process kick off from the command line. The install of updates will progress.

Change the root password and reinstall VCSA software updates

You will eventually see the Packages upgraded successfully, reboot is required to complete the installation message. Initiate a reboot of your VCSA appliance.

Update of the vCenter VCSA appliance is successful after changing the root password

Validating the vCenter Server VCSA Appliance Upgrade after Reboot

It is good after a VCSA reboot to validate the appliance was indeed updated after the command finished and you rebooted the appliance. To do that, simply log into the VAMI interface to the VCSA appliance and validate the version and build number displayed on the Summary screen.

As you can see below, the Version and Build numbers have been updated to the latest and greatest at the time of this writing.

Validate the VCSA appliance version and build number in the VAMI interface

Wrapping Up

The vCenter Update Failed Fix and Reset Banner Error is easily an error that you would encounter if you have a VCSA appliance that has an expired root password. This is a situation that may be commonplace since a VCSA appliance may not have interactive logins with root very often.

However, this is a very non-intuitive error as there is no indication the error with the updates being installed is related to an expired root password. Hopefully, this is error that may not be encountered too often but be aware it is one that you may see related to expired credentials.