How to Fix "Cannot install Connected Machine agent on an Azure virtual machine" on Windows Server

Cristian Vergara 1 Microsoft Employee

Hello
We are conducting some testing with custom images in Azure VMs and the Preview of Update Management Center, as part of the test we would like to install the azure arc agent.
We followed the instructions from:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-arc/servers/plan-evaluate-on-azure-virtual-machine

However, we get the following error message:

Cannot install Connected Machine agent on an Azure virtual machine.

I've verified that there are no extensions installed, the Agent Guest Service is disabled, and the firewall rule is in place.

What else we can try?, any help is appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Cris

Limitless Technology 43,926 Reputation points

2023-02-06T14:42:49.0933333+00:00

Hello Cristian Vergara,

If you find the following in the %ProgramData%\AzureConnectedMachineAgent\Log\himds.log or in installation logs, for example:

time="2021-02-11T08:39:38-08:00" level=error msg="Cannot open event source: Azure Hybrid Instance Metadata Service."

You can verify the permissions by collecting the following registry key from an impacted server.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Eventlog\Application\CustomS

Mitigation can be to grant the permission to write to the SECURITY_SERVICE_RID S-1-5-6 which would grant the required permissions to the himds service account. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/secauthz/well-known-sids.

If the registry key does NOT exist on the impacted VM, then this resolution will NOT apply as there will be a separate root cause such as AV interference.

If the root cause is not found here ,then a procmon trace needs to be taken to analyze the root cause for the msi not being able to start a service.

( In case a procmon trace has to be analyzed , please open an MS Support ticket)

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