If you are managing VMware environment, you have likely run into issues with SSL/TLS certificates in vCenter or ESXi—maybe a warning in the browser or a service that stops working unexpectedly. Managing certificates is essential for security and compliance, but the manual process can be frustrating.
This is where the vCert tool developed by Broadcom will help you. It automates and streamline certificate management for VMware vSphere environments.
In this blog, we will understand how to use the vCert CLI tool to request, install, and renew SSL certificates in vCenter easily.
Why Manage vCenter Certificates?
Certificates in VMware environments serves Encryption to Protects sensitive traffic between vCenter, ESXi, and clients, Authentication to ensures secure connections only to trusted servers and Trust to prevents browser or client-side certificate errors. If certificates get expire or somehow using untrusted ones can lead to service disruptions and security vulnerabilities.
What is vCert Tool?
vCert developed by Broadcom, it is a Command Line (CLI) tool for vCenter Server SSL certificate administration and it supports replacement of expired certificates, trust anchor verification, and remediation of manual configuration errors. Optimizes time by reducing troubleshooting and scripting requirements.
Following are the key Benefits of vCert:
- Automated certificate lifecycle
- Easy integration with VMware and DevOps workflows
- Reduces manual errors
- Supports both Windows and Linux systems
- It Keeps Your Certificates Healthy
- Checks the health of your environment’s certificates
- Quickly spot any expired or soon-to-expire certificates
- Detect missing SAN entries or weak/unsupported algorithms
- Identify mismatched thumbprints in your vCenter extensions
- Machine SSL and Solution User certificates
- STS (Security Token Service) signing certificates
- Trusted Certificate Authorities (CA) in VECS and VMware Directory
- With vCert, you can generate Certificate Signing Requests (CSRs)
- Import signed certificates and private keys
- Replace Machine SSL or Solution User certificates in a few clicks
- Use VMCA as your internal CA to reset certificates
- It can detect and fix trust anchor problems in Lookup Service registrations
- Push updated root or intermediate certificates to the trust stores
- Confirm the integrity of your VECS (VMware Endpoint Certificate Store)
- Verify STS token signing configurations
- Spot any SSL interception issues caused by proxies or other network layers
- Extend your certificate checks to the ESXi layer:
- Validate trust between ESXi hosts and vCenter
- Push new certs or replace existing ones on your ESXi hosts
- Making changes to certificates often requires service restarts.
- With vCert, can restart all or selected vCenter services directly from the tool
- Ensures that your changes take effect with minimal efforts
- It can create a full inventory report of your certificates to help archive your environment’s certificate state for documentation or compliance purposes
unzip vCert.zip
cd vCert
./vCert.py
- Take a snapshot of your vCenter before making any certificate changes.
- If you're using Enhanced Linked Mode (ELM), take snapshots of all vCenters and PSCs at the same time.
- If you have vCenter High Availability (VCHA) enabled, break the cluster before updating the certificates.
- After replacing certs, manually restart vCenter services if vCert doesn't do it for you.
Simple and good explanations
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