Getting following error "An error occurred while fetching identity providers. Please try again later. If the problem persists, contact your administrator" when logging in with domain users on vCenter Server 9.0

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

• Unable to login to vCenter Server using domain account credentials and the following error is received on the UI: 
  

  An error occurred while fetching identity providers. Please try again later. If the problem persists, contact your administrator

• The embedded identity source does not populate correctly in vCenter UI under Administration > Configuration > Identity Provider

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 9.0

Cause

The issue happens because of vmware-trustmanagement service down due to a race condition during the service startup sequence. 

The same can be confirmed by running the following command on the vCenter Server's SSH: 

service-control --status --all

Resolution

This issue is fixed in vCenter version 9.0.2.0.

To prevent the race condition from happening in vCenter versions 9.0.0 and 9.0.1, perform the following commands:

cp /usr/lib/vmware/site-packages/cis/svcaccount_prestart_util.py /root/svcaccount_prestart_util.py.backup

sed -i "s/AUTHZ_OPERATIONS_NOT_SUPPORTED_SVCACCOUNTS = \['sts', 'serviceaccountmgmt', 'vpxd-svcs-user', 'cis-license'\]/AUTHZ_OPERATIONS_NOT_SUPPORTED_SVCACCOUNTS = \['lookupsvc', 'trustmanagement', 'sts', 'serviceaccountmgmt', 'vpxd-svcs-user', 'cis-license'\]/" /usr/lib/vmware/site-packages/cis/svcaccount_prestart_util.py

service-control --stop --all && service-control --start --all

 

Should anything fail to operate as expected, you can roll back this change by performing the following commands:

cp /root/svcaccount_prestart_util.py.backup /usr/lib/vmware/site-packages/cis/svcaccount_prestart_util.py

service-control --stop --all && service-control --start --all

 

Additional Information

This can occur 90 days after the vCenter Server is deployed. The issue comes from a race condition affecting trustmanagement, sts, and lookupsvc services during an occurrence of internal service account rotations.