Error: "vPostgres firstboot (action=firstboot) failed" while upgrading vCenter Server from 5.x to 6.x

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

• Upgrading from vCenter Server 5.x to vCenter Server 6.0 fails with the error:
  
  Encountered an internal error. see C:\ProgramData\vCenterServer\logs\firstboot\vpostgres-firstboot.py_344_stderr.log
   
• In the C:\ProgramData\vCenterServer\logs\firstboot\vpostgres-firstboot.py_344_stderr.log file, you see entries similar to:
  
  vPostgres firstboot(action=firstboot) failed
   
• In the C:\ProgramData\Vmware\CIS\logs\vmware\vpx\vcdb_import.err file, you see entries similar to:
  
  Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Program Files\VMware\vCenter Server\cis_upgrade_runner\payload\component-scripts\vcdb\windows\import\convert.py", line 4, in <module>s_u16 = f1.read()
  File "C:\Program Files\VMware\vCenter Server\python\lib\codecs.py", line 668, in read return self.reader.read(size)
  File "C:\Program Files\VMware\vCenter Server\python\lib\codecs.py", line 474, in read newchars, decodedbytes = self.decode(data, self.errors)
  File "C:\Program Files\VMware\vCenter Server\python\lib\encodings\utf_16.py", line 106, in decode codecs.utf_16_ex_decode(input, errors, 0, False)
  MemoryError

Environment

• VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.0.x
• VMware vCenter Server 6.0.x

Cause

This issue occurs when vCenter Server does not have enough memory to complete the installation.

Resolution

Increase the vCenter Servers memory to at least 16GB.