vCenter Server upgrade fails with error: "Dumping the contents of table 'pm_config_schemas' failed"

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Upgrading vCenter Server fails during the export phase.

In the export-upgrade-runner.log (and Export_com.vmware.vcdb_*.log), you see errors similar to the following:

ERROR vcdb.const Error while exporting source core tables: pg_dump: error: Dumping the contents of table "pm_config_schemas" failed: PQgetResult() failed.
ERROR main Upgrade Phase 'vcdb:Export' failed. Exception: Error while exporting source core tables: pg_dump: error: Dumping the contents of table "pm_config_schemas" failed: PQgetResult() failed.
upgrade_errors.PermanentError: Error while exporting source core tables: pg_dump: error: Dumping the contents of table "pm_config_schemas" failed: PQgetResult() failed.

In the vcdb_export.err log, you see a specific PostgreSQL TOAST corruption error indicating a missing chunk:

pg_dump: error: Dumping the contents of table "pm_config_schemas" failed: PQgetResult() failed.
pg_dump: error: Error message from server: ERROR:  missing chunk number 0 for toast value 15845203 in pg_toast_29077
pg_dump: error: The command was: COPY vumdbc.pm_config_schemas (vib, schema_component, schema_group, schema_key, schema_property) TO stdout;

Environment

vCenter Server

Cause

This issue occurs due to data corruption in the vCenter Server database (VCDB), specifically TOAST (The Oversized-Attribute Storage Technique) corruption within the vumdbc.pm_config_schemas table. Because the database cannot successfully read the corrupted records, the database export process (pg_dump) fails, terminating the upgrade.

Resolution

Resolving this issue requires direct manual modification of the vCenter Server PostgreSQL database to identify and clear the corrupted records.

Please contact Broadcom Support and reference this Knowledge Base article to safely resolve the database corruption and proceed with the upgrade.