Update Manager fails with unknown error during host remediation

During an vSphere 6.5 > 6.7 update a was host failing continously at the remediation with an “unknown error”. The host was updated from ESXI 6.5 to 6.7 using an upgrade baseline. Other hosts were updated to 6.7 and with the latest patches without any issues. Something strange was going on…

The esxupdate.log and the vua.log on the host itself showed nothing special. So I checked the vmware-vum-server-log4cpp.log which was much more informative!

[2020-07-19 13:03:25:217 'SingleHostScanTask.SingleHostScanTask{262}' 139762329831168 ERROR] [singleHostScanTask, 693] caught an odbc error: "ODBC error: (23505) - ERROR: duplicate key value violates unique constraint "pk_vci_scanresults"; Error while executing the query" is returned when executing SQL statement "INSERT INTO VCI_SCANRESULTS(endtime, id, scan_status, scan_type, starttime, target_component, target_uid) VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?)"
[2020-07-19 13:03:25:219 'SingleHostScanTask.SingleHostScanTask{262}' 139762329831168 ERROR] [singleHostScanTask, 404] SingleHostScan caught exception: caught an odbc error: "ODBC error: (23505) - ERROR: duplicate key value violates unique constraint "pk_vci_scanresults"; Error while executing the query" is returned when executing SQL statement "INSERT INTO VCI_SCANRESULTS(endtime, id, scan_status, scan_type, starttime, target_component, target_uid) VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?)" with code: -1
[2020-07-19 13:03:25:223 'SingleHostScanTask.SingleHostScanTask{262}' 139762329831168 ERROR] [vciTaskBase, 568] Task execution has failed: caught an odbc error: "ODBC error: (23505) - ERROR: duplicate key value violates unique constraint "pk_vci_scanresults"; Error while executing the query" is returned when executing SQL statement "INSERT INTO VCI_SCANRESULTS(endtime, id, scan_status, scan_type, starttime, target_component, target_uid) VALUES (?

Well… ERROR: duplicate key value violates unique constraint “pk_vci_scanresults” is not what I expected, but it is an error, and it occured everytime I tried to remediate the host.

Google found nothing about this error, so I decided to reset the VUM database. Please don’t try this at your customer! Log a call at VMware.

To reset the VUM database:

  1. Connect to vCenter Server Appliance via SSH
  2. Switch to the BASH 
  3. Stop the VMware Update Manager Service with this command
service-control --stop vmware-updatemgr
  1. To reset the VMware Update Manager Database (applies only to VCSA 6.7 and 7.0!)
/usr/lib/vmware-updatemgr/bin/updatemgr-utility.py reset-db
  1. Delete the contents of the VMware Update Manager Patch Store
rm -rf /storage/updatemgr/patch-store/\*
  1. Start the VMware Update Manager Service again
service-control --start vmware-updatemgr

You will lose all your baselines, so you have to configure them again. And you need to download all patches again.

For vSAN environments this procedure will also remove the vSAN default baselines, but they will recreated automatically when there is a configuration change to vSAN or an update to the HCL DB. Again: Don’t do this at home!