PCD Deployment Fails with Error Etcd Leader Changed

Problem

Self Hosted PCD Management Plane deployment sometimes fails with Error from server: etcdserver: leader changed

Environment

  • Self-hosted Private Cloud Director Virtualization - v2025.4 and Higher

  • Self-hosted Private Cloud Director Kubernetes - v2025.4 and Higher

  • Component: etcd

Cause

The leader node in an etcd cluster handles all write requests and coordinates data replication. If the leader experiences high CPU usage, memory pressure, or Disk I/O bottlenecks due to heavy load or insufficient resources, it may become unresponsive or slow, leading to other nodes initiating a leader election.

Diagnostics

During execution, airctl commands fail at a specific step, with logs explicitly showing: Error from server: etcdserver: leader changed

This error is always prefixed by the step failure message.

$ cat airctl-logs/airctl.log INFO recovering configuration state... ERROR Restoring consul/vault and original state files... fatal error: failed to restore consul for region: failed to add key customers/[CUSTOMER_UUID]/regions/[REGION_UUID]/services/preference-store/cfg/enableAuth in consul: failed to put KV customers/[CUSTOMER_UUID]/regions/[REGION_UUID]/services/preference-store/cfg/enableAuth:true to consul: exit status 1 - Error from server: etcdserver: leader changed .. snip.. ERROR fatal error: failed to back up: failed to backup region: failed to backup consul: failed to generate consul snapshot: exit status 1 - Error from server: etcdserver: leader changed

Resolution

Uninstall the current PCD Management Plane and retry the PCD Management Plane Deployment.

Next to read:
How to Check ETCD Cluster Health?
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PCD Deployment Fails with Error Etcd Leader ChangedProblemEnvironmentCauseDiagnosticsResolution