System Center Orchestrator Troubleshooting: "Database Configuration" error when installing a Runbook Server
Applies to
This guide applies to System Center Orchestrator 1801, 2016, 2019
Introduction
Sometimes when environments grow we need to expand to be able to handle the growth, in Orchestrator growth usually means more runbooks. This means we will need to install additional runbook servers to be able to handle all runbooks in the environment.
By default, each runbook server is configured to simultaneously run a maximum of 50 runbooks, this can be changed however, but it is not a recommended approach.
If we consider to change the limit for the maximum amount of simultaneous runbooks, we need to make sure to check the resource requirements of the runbooks on the particular runbook server.
The recommended approach is to install additional runbook servers, adding additional runbook servers is a very straightforward process.
However, there is one prerequisite that isn't mentioned anywhere in the official Microsoft documentation or in the prerequisite check of the Orchestrator installation.
This means that when we attempt to install a new or an additional runbook server, the installation will fail on the Database Configuration step, in this guide we will go through how to resolve this error.
Installing the Runbook Server
We have a server which we want to make a Runbook server, it is actually a straightforward next-next-next installation process.
We will go through the runbook server installation step-by-step, to make things very clear.
1. Run the SetupOrchestrator.exe with Run as administrator from the extracted System Center Orchestrator 2019 installation media.
2. In the Microsoft System Center 2019 Orchestrator setup wizard, click on Runbook Server which can be found under the Standalone installations section.
3. Provide a name, organization and the product key for Orchestrator 2019 and click Next.
4. Check the I accept the license terms check box and click Next.
5. Click Next again.
6. The Orchestrator setup wizard will now check for required hardware and software, this is the step where the setup wizard should warn about missing prerequisites.
7. However the setup wizard continues and goes forward, enter the username and password for the domain account that will be used for the Orchestrator service, then click Test to make sure the account credentials are accepted.
8. Once the credentials are accepted, click Next.
9. Now provide the server and instance name of the Orchestrator database, if a different port is used, make sure to provide it as well, then click Test Database Connection to verify that we can access the database.
10. Once the database connection is successful, click Next.
11. Choose Existing database and select the Orchestrator database.
12. Provide a installation location or go with the default settings,** **and then click Next.
13. Select whether we should check for updates or not, then click Next.
14. Select if we want to send error reports or not, click Next to continue.
15. Finally press Install to start the installation of the Runbook server.
16. The installation should only take a few minutes, and will eventually fail on the Database configuration step, click on the log file link to review the installation log for more information why the Runbook server installation has failed.
Reviewing the Runbook server installation log
The Runbook server installation log will be located here:
- %LocalAppData%\Microsoft System Center 2012\Orchestrator\LOGS
The log name will be named SetupWizard.log.
The error message will be located at the end of the log, scroll down and we should see why the Runbook server installation has failed.
The Problem
Here's a screenshot of the error from the SetupWizard.log file:
(To properly see the image, right-click the image and open the image in a new tab)
The interesting part is the following:
Database configuration failed: : Threw Exception.Type: System.InvalidOperationException, Exception Error Code: 0x80131509, Exception.Message: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft System Center\Orchestrator\Management Server\DBSetup.exe failed. Please check C:\ProgramData\Microsoft System Center 2012\Orchestrator for more detailed log.
06:09:34:StackTrace: at Microsoft.SystemCenter.Orchestrator.Installer.Setup.SetupHelper.CallExe(String productCode, String componentCode, Func`2 generateArgs)
at Microsoft.SystemCenter.Orchestrator.Installer.Setup.DbConfigInstallAction.Execute()
The Solution
Since System Center Orchestrator 2016 Update Rollup 4 the Microsoft SQL Server Native Client is required for installing both the Orchestrator management server and Orchestrator runbook server.
In order to fix the installation issue, we need to install the Microsoft SQL Server Native Client on the server, the Orchestrator setup requires this component to do configurations in the Orchestrator database.
Download: Microsoft SQL Server Native Client
How do we proceed now?
After installing the Microsoft SQL Server Native Client on the server where we want to install the Runbook server, we will want to try to install the Runbook Server once again.
However if we try to initiate the Runbook Server installation, nothing will happen, and we start to wonder why?
The reason behind this is because the Runbook Server actually got installed, but not entirely.
If we open the Control Panel on the server where we tried to install the Runbook Server we can see that it has been installed:
We can also see that shortcuts have been created in the start menu:
The proper way to correct this is to uninstall the Runbook Server from the Control Panel, and then perform a reinstall to get everything installed properly in place.
Run steps 1-15 in the Installing the Runbook Server section of this guide and we should accomplish the following end result:
There we go, we have now successfully installed a Runbook Server!