Error: Locator does not refer to an object during VCF Operations deployment

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager / VCF Installer

Issue/Introduction

• The VCF Operations deployment fails in VCF Installer, and the VCF Operations virtual machine is deleted automatically during the initiation phase. This issue occurs when the vCenter inventory path resolution fails.
  
  
• SDDC Build Service pod logs shows the following error message:
  
  Command: kubectl logs vcf-sddc-build-service-sddcbuild-########-#### -n vcf-sddc-lcm | less
  
  Log location in SOS bundle: /var/log/pods/vcf-sddc-lcm_vcf-sddc-build-service-sddcbuild-########-####-####/sddcbuild/##.log
  
  

  YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.Z stdout F YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.Z DEBUG sddc-build-service ## [lcm@#### scPath="ops" thread="pool-###-thread-##" logger="c.b.v.l.s.b.p.o.d.o.OvfToolExecution" method="run:##"] [] - Error: Locator does not refer to an object: vi://SDDC_FQDN-vc-########-####-####-####-############@domain_name@domain_user/domain - ###??#/host/######/Resources/#########
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.Z stdout F YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.Z  DEBUG sddc-build-service ## [lcm@#### scPath="ops" thread="pool-###-thread-##" logger="c.b.v.l.s.b.p.o.d.o.OvfToolExecution" method="run:##"] [] - Completed with errors

Environment

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.x

Cause

The SDDC Manager deployment workflow cannot parse the vCenter inventory path when the datacenter name contains unsupported characters, spaces, or non-alphanumeric symbols. This prevents the OVF deployment tool from identifying the correct resource pool or host destination.

Resolution

1. Take a snapshot of the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) and the SDDC Manager virtual machine.
2. Log in to the vSphere Client.
3. Locate the datacenter object currently used for the VCF deployment.
4. Rename the datacenter to use only standard lowercase alphanumeric characters. Ensure the name contains no spaces or special characters.
5. Retry the VCF Operations deployment from the SDDC Manager dashboard.