Troubleshooting Active Directory Group Membership Login Failures in VMware vCenter Server

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vCenter Server 8.0

Issue/Introduction

This article outlines steps to troubleshoot scenarios where specific Active Directory (AD) users are unable to authenticate to the vCenter Server, while other users within the same domain or group structure can authenticate successfully.

This behavior often points to group membership conflicts or attribute synchronization issues rather than general identity source misconfiguration.

Symptoms:

• AD users receive an "Invalid Credentials" error when logging in via the vSphere Client.
• The issue is isolated to members of a specific AD group.
• Other AD users or accounts (e.g., [email protected]) can log in without issue.

Environment

• VMware vCenter Server 7.x
• VMware vCenter Server 8.x
• Active Directory over LDAP Identity Source

Cause

• AD group membership conflicts.
• Synchronization latency between AD Domain Controllers.
• Group policy restrictions on the specific AD group.

Resolution

1. Isolate the affected user: Temporarily remove one affected user from the problematic AD group.
2. Allow synchronization: Wait for at least 15–30 minutes to ensure Active Directory changes have replicated across domain controllers.
3. Verify login: Attempt to log in with the user credentials via an Incognito browser session.
4. Check AD attributes: Verify the user's memberOf attribute in the Active Directory Attribute Editor to ensure correct group nesting.
5. Verify vCenter logs: Inspect /var/log/vmware/sso/ssoAdminServer.log for group lookup failures specifically related to the AD group in question.

Additional Information

• If the issue persists, review the AD group policy for any "Log On To" restrictions that might be blocking the authentication request.
• For defects and enhancements related to this behavior, please subscribe to this article to be updated on fix status: https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/275360