Upgrading the VirtualCenter from 2.0.x to 2.5 can be a daunting task. Make sure you have a decent backup of your VC database as an upgrade failure can be hard to recover. We have noticed an undocumented problem while upgrading VirtualCenter database on a SQL Server 2005 SP2. We found the following error when browsing the VCDatabaseUpgrade.log file:
“Error: Failed to execute SQL procedure. Got exception: ERROR [42000] [Microsoft][SQL Native Client][SQL Server]The EXECUTE permission was denied on the object 'xp_sqlagent_is_starting', database 'mssqlsystemresource', schema 'sys'.”
Next to having the necessary dbo rights on your virtualcenter DB itself and the MSDB (the upgrade creates some maintenance jobs), you also need execute permissions on all XP_SQLAGENT_* extended stored procedures on the master database. This can be done by allowing all SQL agent related permissions to your virtualcenter user. These can be found under Master => programmability => Extended Stored Procedures => sys.Xp_SQLAgent_*

