Joining an existing vCenter Single Sign-On (SSO) installation fails with the error message: “Error 29103. Cannot read file or directory.”

Problem

You have an existing vCenter deployed in your environment and you would like to deploy a second node in LinkedMode so you proceed with the install of SSO on the second node:

Select Join an existing vCenter Single Sign-Oninstallation:

Select Multisite:

… and proceed with filling in the fields to install but receive the following error:

Error 29103. Cannot read file or directory.

Solution

The reason why I was receiving this error was because my colleague who deployed the first node used the Simple install option:

… which does not support multisite as discussed in the following forum thread:

http://communities.vmware.com/message/2154989

The solution?  Uninstall everything in reverse order for the first node and reinstall using the appropriate multisite settings:

I went ahead and uninstalled and reinstalled the whole environment over the weekend to get Linked Mode up.  Situations like these is why I prefer to do everything myself.