vCloud Automation Center Designer: Setup was Interrupted

If you have the mis good fortune to work with the vCloud / vRA Automation Center Designer, which can still be used / is required for some elements of automation within vCAC / vRA then you may experience issues even installing it.

While attempting to install the Designer client on two different management servers (Windows 2008 R2 and 2012 R2), I received the same error:

vCloud Automation Center Designer: Setup was Interrupted

with no real indication of what the problem was. (Familiar installation story vCAC fans? :-) )

A log file is created in C:\vcacLog from which I got:

MSI (c) (10:BC) [16:39:50:721]: Product: VMware vCloud Automation Center Designer – Installation failed.

MSI (c) (10:BC) [16:39:50:721]: Windows Installer installed the product. Product Name: VMware vCloud Automation Center Designer. Product Version: 6.2.1.3390. Product Language: 1033. Manufacturer: VMware, Inc.. Installation success or error status: 1602.

Not too much info around for that error, other than this communities post. I had tried installing it on different OS versions, also made sure .NET 4.5 was installed (4.5.2 in the end), had local admin rights and UAC was turned off.

Eventually I stumbled on this VMware KB with a similar issue. So I added the certificate from the IaaS server (https://iaas.fdqn/Repository) to the Trusted Root Certification Authorities store on the machine Designer was being installed onto.

Note: this was in a lab environment so I was only using self-generated certs throughout vRA.

A subsequent reattempt of the Designer install was successful.

Curiously, a subsequent reattempt on the other management server, without importing the certificate, was also then successful. Possibly it is only needed for the first time any client is setup to use it.