"Identity Internal Server Error 500" in VCFonVxRail 5.2.1 SDDC GUI

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.2.1 provides a comprehensive platform for managing the entire lifecycle of your software-defined data center. However, during daily operations, some users may encounter errors within the SDDC Manager GUI.

One such issue is the “Identity Internal Server Error,” which can cause disruptions in accessing the SDDC Manager interface.

In this blog, we'll walk through how to identify and resolve the "Identity Internal Server Error" in the SDDC Manager GUI, focusing on error logs and authentication failure.

Error Details

The error message displayed in the GUI:

{"message":"Identity Internal Server Error","code":"IDENTITY_INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR","status":500}

This error can disrupt the normal operation of the VCF platform, causing difficulties in performing routine administrative tasks.

Root Cause: Authentication Failure

Upon investigating the error logs /var/log/vmware/vcf/sddc-manager-ui-app/sddcManagerServer.log & /var/log/vmware/vcf/commonsvcs/vcf-commonsvcs.log, we can see the following specific entry:

ERROR [5b08949e26874c68] [services/errorHandling.js, http-post-callback, productionErrorRoute:106] 600.158: VError: Sending error response: 500 - "{\"errorCode\":\"IDENTITY_INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR\",\"arguments\":[],\"message\":\"Identity Internal Server Error\",\"referenceToken\":\"TQRS123\"}" Caused by: com.vmware.vim.sso.client.exception.AuthenticationFailedException: Provided credentials are not valid

The root cause is an authentication failure. The message "Provided credentials are not valid" suggests that there may be an issue with the credentials used for Single Sign-On (SSO) or authentication services within VCF

Steps to Resolve:

1. SSH to SDDC Manager with vcf user and su to root

2. Run the below command to retrieve the SSO password.lookup_passwords -u administrator@vsphere.local -p '<SSO_PASSWORD>' -n 1 -s 10 -e PSC

3. In my case the password for administrator was set to simple password , as the VCFonVxRail upgrade was failing with invalid password due to the special characters .

4. Log into vCenter and change the password for the SSO administrator account to match the password , as per STEP 2.

5. Restart services on the SDDC Manager/opt/vmware/vcf/operationsmanager/scripts/cli/sddcmanager_restart_services.sh

VMware KB