Converge fails with error: "AFD Leave Domain Failed"

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

The purpose of this KB is to guide you through successfully converging the PSC into the vCenter Server for an embedded topology.

Symptoms:

• Converge fails during firstboot of services.
• In the /var/log/firstboot/vmafd-firstboot.py_xxxx_stderr.log file, you see entries similar to:

<YYYY-MM-DD>T<TIME> AFD Leave Domain Failed
<YYYY-MM-DD>T<TIME> password: Error 136: Operation failed with error ERROR_NOT_JOINED (136)

Environment

VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.7.x
VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.5.x

Cause

This issue can occur when the provided password of the SSO administrator user contains many special characters or is high in complexity.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, follow the steps below:

1. Restore the vCenter Server and PSC from a backup or snapshot.
2. Change the password of the SSO administrator to something with low complexity and limited special characters.

For example: 
VMware@123

For more information, see Resetting the vCenter SSO Administrator Password.

3. Reattempt the converge.
4. Once completed successfully, reset the SSO administrator password.