Problem

Trying to start the vault server following the guides that specify creating the data directory in /home/vault/data results in the above error and service cannot be started.

Solution

According to the guide here: https://learn.hashicorp.com/tutorials/vault/raft-deployment-guide?in=vault/day-one-raft, changing the data directory to /opt/raft and the hcl file to reflect that the server can be started without any errors.