Upgrading to vCenter server 4.0 update 1 or vcenter server 4.1 fails

Last Friday I did upgrade vCenter from vSphere 4.0 to vSphere 4.1 U1. During upgrade I had to solve an issue which I saw for the very first time. In the middle of upgrade error appeared :

unable to delete vctomcat service

Few minutes of “googling” and I’d found that error was cause by tomcat which didn’t shutdown in timely manner. VMware KB provides solution: to solve it you have to reboot server where your vCenter is installed. If you wanna avoid this particular problem, Windows registry has to be modify as follows:

1. Click Start > Run, type regedit, and click OK.
2. Navigate to the following registry key:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetServicesvctomcatParameters

3. Right-click the Parameters folder and click New.
4. Add the following (DWORD) registry values:Value Name: WaitHintStart
   Value: <Time to wait for service to start in milliseconds>

   Value Name: WaitHintStop
   Value: <Time to wait for service to stop in milliseconds>

5. Repeat Steps 1 to 4 for the vpxd service. The registry key is located at:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetServicesvpxdParameters

VMware KB doesn’t provide exact value for DWORD registry , I set 10000 ms (10 seconds) which should be more than enough for tomcat to shutdown properly.

Here you can find source VMware KB article: KB1016655