I recently went to upgrade one of my VMware vSphere lab environments using Update Manager and was presented with the following “There are errors during the staging operation” error and as a result the remediation failed.

If you ever receive this error, or in fact any errors with Update Manager, then the first thing to do is to check the VMware Update Manager logs for more detail on what could be causing the problem.  This log file can be found on the vCenter Server (and not the local PC from which you may be running the vSphere Client from, eg: your PC) in the following directory:

“C:\Users\All Users\VMware\VMware Update Manager\Logs”

In my instance the log presented that the following information which as you can see doesn’t really give any useful information as to what the cause of the problem may be (ie: blank fields – see highlighted below).

[2009-12-10 07:00:20:909 'Activation.trace' 5576 DEBUG]  [activationValidator, 1060] Invoke done: integrity.BaselineComplianceStatusCollector.GetStatus session: 38D5BC03-1597-441C-BC08-CB35B390314C
Result:
(integrity.BaselineComplianceStatus) [
   (integrity.BaselineComplianceStatus) {
      dynamicType = <unset>,
      key = 2,
      status = "NotCompliant",
   }
]
[2009-12-10 07:000:909 'VciRemediateTask.RemediateTask{62}' 4876 INFO]  [vciTaskBase, 1275] SerializeToVimFault fault:
(integrity.fault.RemediateFailure) {
   dynamicType = <unset>,
   faultCause = (vmodl.MethodFault) null,
   reason = <unset>,
   msg = "",
}
Converted fault:
(vim.fault.ExtendedFault) {
   dynamicType = <unset>,
   faultCause = (vmodl.MethodFault) null,
   faultTypeId = "com.vmware.vcIntegrity.RemediateFailure",
   data = (vim.KeyValue) [
      (vim.KeyValue) {
         dynamicType = <unset>,
         key = "dynamicType",
         value = "",
      },
      (vim.KeyValue) {
         dynamicType = <unset>,
         key = "dynamicProperty",
         value = "",
      },
      (vim.KeyValue) {
         dynamicType = <unset>,
         key = "faultCause",
         value = "",
      },
      (vim.KeyValue) {
         dynamicType = <unset>,
         key = "faultMessage",
        value = "",
      },
      (vim.KeyValue) {
         dynamicType = <unset>,
         key = "reason",
        value = "",
      }
   ],
   msg = "",
}

Luckily I had seen and heard about this error before.  It is caused by there being ‘inaccessible’ or orphaned VM instances on the ESX host I was trying to upgrade (see below).

The Solution

To resolve this issue simply detach any such inaccessible VMs from the ESX host and then ‘Remediate’ the host again from within Update Manager.

Everything going to plan you should find that the remediation now works and your ESX host updates successfully. The only last job would be to reconnect any VMs that were at the time ‘inaccessible’. 

Hope this helped.