Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.2 installation get stuck at the create management cluster

While working on a TKG 1.2.0 on vSphere deployment, we faced this issue issue due to which the TKG management cluster deployment failed. In this blog post, I am discussing the details of the issue and how we resolved it

Symptoms:

• Deploying a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG)1.2 management cluster on vSphere fails at stage 5 of 8
• The management cluster creation does not initiate and no virtual machines are created

• You see messages noting connectivity issue with vSphere in the capv-controller-manager pod logs, similar to the following:

E0107 09:29:44.221659       1 controller.go:248] controller-runtime/controller "msg"="Reconciler error" "error"="failed to create vSphere session: error setting up new vSphere SOAP client: ServerFaultCode: Cannot complete login due to an incorrect user name or password." "controller"="vspherevm" "name"="tkgmgmt-tanzu-control-plane-g5nj6" "namespace"="tkg-system"

• The password for the vCenter user is complex and contains special characters or the username is specifice in the “domain\username” format.
• You can log in to the vCenter Server using the same username and password supplied during the TKG installation.

Cause:

The issue was caused due to the complexity of the vSphere user account password used and the format of the account.

Resolution:

This is a known issue and currently there is no resolution. To work around the issue,

• Use a simple password for the service account used to connect to vSphere during TKG deployment.
• Use the “username@domain” format for specifying the vCenter Server user, instead of “domain\username”

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