Error: "Cannot invoke String.replace... because datastoreContainerId is null" during VCF Workload Domain Discovery

Products

• VCF Operations
• VMware SDDC Manager / VCF Installer

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms

• During the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Add Workload Domain workflow, the discovery task may fail while querying the vCenter inventory.
  
  
• The SDDC Manager log (/var/log/vmware/vcf/domainmanager/domainmanager.log) reports the following exception:
  Cannot invoke "String.replace(java.lang.CharSequence, java.lang.CharSequence)" because "datastoreContainerId" is null
  
  
• This error occurs when the SDDC Manager service is unable to uniquely identify a datastore container, often due to interference from active vSAN health alerts in the vCenter environment, causing a failure in the discovery subtask.

Environment

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1.x

Cause

Active vSAN health alerts can interfere with the VCF discovery service's ability to accurately poll the vCenter inventory for datastore information, triggering a guardrail exception.

Resolution

1. Log in to the vSphere Client.
2. Navigate to the vSAN health check section.
3. Identify and silence the active health alerts for the affected cluster.
4. In the SDDC Manager UI, navigate to the inventory synchronization section and trigger a manual inventory refresh to clear stale metadata.
5. Retry the Add Workload Domain task.

Additional Information

If this issue persists, collect SDDC Manager support bundles and contact support via Creating and Managing Broadcom Support Cases.