[This post comes to us courtesy of Rituraj Choudhary & Ajay Sarkaria from Commercial Technical Support]
Once the Windows Server Essentials 2012 R2 setup is complete, the server reboots to the desktop and would ask you to configure Windows Server Essentials Experience role.
After the role is installed and you run the Post-deployment Configuration Wizard, it may fail as:
Configuration encountered some issues
Please Click Retry. If the issue still exists please refer to the help link for more troubleshooting steps.
This issue may occur if the Logon as a service Group Policy is configured under Default Domain Controller Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Policies -> Windows Settings -> Security Settings -> Local Policies -> User Rights Assignment.
There is an account ServerAdmin$ that is used for initial configuration and needs the logon as a service user right for the task to complete. The current workaround is to add ServerAdmin$ account to this policy:
The configuration thereafter should continue fine.