vCenter Server login page fails to load with encoded HTML error due to legacy Aria branding entries

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

When attempting to access the vSphere Client user interface, the vCenter Server login page fails to render properly. Instead of the standard login fields, the interface displays an encoded HTML error message. This problem prevents administrators from authenticating and performing management operations via the vSphere Client UI.

Environment

vCenter Server 8.0U3

Cause

An uninstalled legacy VMware Aria product deployment failed to fully purge its integration metadata from the vCenter Server VMware Directory Service (VMDIR) LDAP database during its uninstallation lifecycle. This leaves an orphaned top splash branding attribute value within the directory tree structure, causing the login page rendering engine to throw a parsing exception when parsing the UI assets.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, the stale branding entry must be removed from the VMDIR database.

1. Take a consistent, offline snapshot of all vCenter Server nodes participating in the Enhanced Linked Mode (ELM) single sign-on domain to establish a valid rollback point.

2. Log in to the vCenter Server Appliance via SSH and perform a manual backup of the embedded PostgreSQL database (VCDB).

3. Connect to the VMware Directory Service (VMDIR) LDAP database using an external LDAP editor (such as JXplorer) using the administrator credentials (e.g. [email protected]).

4. Navigate through the directory sub-tree path under the vsphere.local partition to locate the configuration parameters containing the legacy UI branding properties.

5. Locate the vmwSTSBrandName attribute. The specific value line that contains the legacy or corrupted HTML path pattern referencing the image path below must be deleted:

   vmwSTSBrandName <img id='topSplash' src='../../resources/img/AppBgPattern.png'><img id='brand' src='../../resources/img/vm...

6. Select and permanently delete this defunct value string inside the vmwSTSBrandName attribute to clear the stale entry.

7. Restart the vCenter Server management and UI services to clear cached presentation values by running the following commands:
   
   service-control --stop vpxd vsphere-ui
service-control --start vpxd vsphere-ui

Additional Information

For guidelines on working with vCenter Server LDAP directories and executing database backups, see vCenter Server Architecture and Lifecycle documentation.