When using System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) to perform a Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversion, the job may fail at 60% with the following error:

Error (2912)
An internal error has occurred trying to contact an agent on the vmmserver.contoso.com server.

Recommended Action
Ensure the agent is installed and running. Ensure the WS-Management service is installed and running, then restart the agent.

Cause:

During the ‘Make operating system virtualizable’ step, files are copied from the destination host (the server that will host the virtualized system) to the SCVMM Server. This BITS operation fails due to a certificate problem as indicated by the error 0x80072F0C (ERROR_INTERNET_CLIENT_AUTH_CERT_NEEDED).

Resolution:

To resolve this issue, remove the managed host from the SCVMM server and also delete any residual certificates from the host on the VMM server, then re-add the host:

1. On the SCVMM server, remove the managed host from the console. The steps on how to remove a managed host are outlined in the following TechNet article:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc956121.aspx (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc956121.aspx)

2. Now we need to locate and delete any certificates for the Host computer.

3. Open the Certificate console on the SCVMM server.

a. Open a new mmc and add the certificates snap-in.
b. Select the option of ‘computer account’ and ‘local computer’.
c. Select Finish and Ok to load the snap-in.

4. The certificates for the Host computer can be in any of the following locations.

a. Personal Certificates.
b. Trusted People (if the host is W2K8 or W2K8 R2).
c. Trusted Root Authorities (If the host is W2K3).

5. In each store, expand the Friendly Name field and locate the certificate[s] for the Host server that have a Friendly Name starting with ‘SCVMM_CERTIFICATE_KEY_CONTAINER’ followed by either the FQDN / IP address / NetBIOS name of the Host server and delete them.

6. Re-add the host in SCVMM which recreates the certificates as needed.

More Information:

SCVMM uses BITS to transfer payload between SCVMM managed computers. These data transfers are encrypted by using a self-signed certificate generated at the time a host machine is added to SCVMM. If these certificates are missing or corrupted from the SCVMM server or managed computers, the payload deployment job can fail. Deleting the certificates and re-adding the host will cause the certificates to be regenerated.

For the latest information on this issue see the following Knowledge Base article:

KB2385280 – P2V fails with Error 2912 0x80072F0C with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 or System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2

J.C. Hornbeck | System Center Knowledge Engineer