Installation failure on an Exchange Server 2016 with CU6

Question

Hello there, 
 We are having trouble installing Sophos PureMessage 4.0.3 on our Exchange Server 2016 with CU6 on Windows 2016. The installer fails at "Start copying Files" and errors out with these messages: 
 PureMessage for Microsoft Exchange: setup unable to create the PureMessage databases - Error details: COM error-code 0x80004005 : Unspecified error 
 And then dialogue box popup with: 
 Setup encountered an error while gathering system information for the server installation -- Error details: COM error-code 0x80004005 : Unspecified error Error code 1603 was returned when running: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msiexec.exe ADDLOCAL=ClientInstall,ClientServerInstall,ServerExchangeStore,ServerInstall,ServerMain,ServerAntiSpam /qb /lvoicewarmupx! C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Local\Temp\MsiPureMessage-20171013122948.log SETUP_INIPATH=C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Roaming\PureMessageSetup.ini REBOOT=Suppress TRANSFORMS=:1033 /i "D:\pme_403_64_AVAS\PM\Sophos PureMessage.msi&ldquo; 
 Our current setup is a three node DAG and we have managed to install PureMessage on one of the nodes, however the installation fails on the remaining two nodes. 
 Any suggestions are welcome. 
 Thanks

Paragon GD · Answer

We finally managed to install PureMessage on two remaining nodes. Turns out to be an issue with DFSR role in Windows 2016. It seems you can't add member servers to a replication group on the GUI tools. Sophos support had suggested checking if DFSR replication group was created and if not referred us to this article, to manually create it 
 Article ID: 60679 Title: PureMessage for Microsoft Exchange: how to create a DFSR replication group as required by the PureMessage installer URL: http://sophos.com/kb/60679 
 
 Since the bug exists in the DFSR management tool, I was unable to create a new group and instead created it using PowerShell 
 
 New-DfsReplicationGroup -GroupName "Sophos_PureMessageRG_YourDAGName" -DomainName yourdomain.com 
 
 Add-DfsrMember -GroupName "Sophos_PureMessageRG_YourDAGName" -ComputerName Server1,Server2,Server3 -DomainName yourdomain.com 
 
 Get-DfsReplicationGroup | New-DfsReplicatedFolder -FolderName "Sophos PureMessage Quarantine" 
 
 Add-DfsrConnection -GroupName "Sophos_PureMessageRG_YourDAGName" -SourceComputerName "Server1" -DestinationComputerName "Server2" 
 
 Add-DfsrConnection -GroupName "Sophos_PureMessageRG_YourDAGName" -SourceComputerName "Server1" -DestinationComputerName "Server3" 
 
 Get-DfsReplicationGroup | Set-DfsrMembership -FolderName "Sophos PureMessage Quarantine" -ContentPath "C:\Program Files\Sophos\PureMessage\Quarantine" -ComputerName "Server1" -PrimaryMember $true -StagingPathQuotaInMB 16384 -Force 
 
 Get-DfsReplicationGroup | Set-DfsrMembership -FolderName "Sophos PureMessage Quarantine" -ContentPath "C:\Program Files\Sophos\PureMessage\Quarantine" -ComputerName "Server2","Server3" -StagingPathQuotaInMB 16384 -Force 
 
 After creating the replication groups via PowerShell, PureMessage installed successfully.