SDDC Manager UI Fails to Load Inventory - NullPointerException Due to Stale Domain Entries

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager / VCF Installer

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms

Users may encounter the following issues in VCF 9.0.2 SDDC Manager:

• SDDC Manager UI fails to load Management or Workload Domain details.
• Errors such as "failed to load cluster details" appear in the UI.
• Cluster deployment or deletion tasks fail midway, leaving the inventory in an inconsistent state.

Environment

• Product: VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0.2
• Component: SDDC Manager

Cause

The issue is typically caused by a stale or orphaned domain entry in the SDDC Manager database that is not properly associated with a cluster. This leads to a java.lang.NullPointerException when the Resource Aggregator attempts to map elements to a null key.

Log Evidence: In /var/log/vmware/vcf/domainmanager/domainmanager.log: ERROR [vcf_dm] Servlet.service() for servlet [dispatcherServlet] threw exception [Request processing failed: java.lang.NullPointerException: element cannot be mapped to a null key]

Resolution

• To resolve this issue, the stale database entries must be manually removed.

  Prerequisites

  • Take a snapshot of the SDDC Manager VM before proceeding with any database modifications.

  Steps

  1. Identify Stale Entries: Log in to the SDDC Manager database and identify orphaned domains or clusters that no longer exist in vCenter but remain in the domain or cluster tables.
     • Run the below command to connect the SDDC platform database
       psql --host=localhost -U postgres -d platform -c "SELECT id, name domain_id FROM cluster;"
       
       Example output:
       
  2. Database Cleanup: Manually delete the identified stale entries. 
     
     • Run the following command 
       psql --host=localhost -U postgres -d platform -c "DELETE FROM cluster WHERE id = '< id listed from the above command>';"
  3. Restart Services: Restart the SDDC Manager services to refresh the inventory
     • systemctl restart domainmanager
     • systemctl restart sddc-manager-ui-app
  4. Verify Inventory: Log back into the SDDC Manager UI and verify that the Workload Domains and Clusters are now loading correctly.

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