TroubleshootingTroubleshooting

Upgrading the vCenter Server from 5.5 to 6.0 fails at the pre-checks with the error message “vCenter CA certificate not verified. Stopping”

Recently I encountered an issue on one of the customer’s environment where customer was upgrading the environment from 5.5 to 6.0 and the pre-checks fails with the below error message as displayed in the screenshot.

 

 

The error looked pretty complex but the resolution seemed to be pretty simple.  During upgrade the vCenter was expecting chain of vCenter and the actual root certificate under below location.

C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\SSL.

We followed the below procedure to get past the issue.

Copy vCenter certificate, intermediate cert(if any)and root certificate on the same location as mentioned above.

Copy the content (open the certificate in notepad) of the certificates and add it to the one single file where vCenter certificate would follow by intermediate (if any) ending with root certificate. For the better understanding you can find the below format.

 

—–BEGIN CERTIFICATE—–

MIIFxTCCBK2gAwIBAgIKYaLJSgAAAAAAITANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQUFADBGMRMwEQYK

CZImiZPyLGQBGRYDbmV0MRYwFAYKCZImiZPyLGQBGRYGbW5uZXh0MRcwFQYDVQQD

Ew5tbm5leHQtQUQtMS1DQTAeFw0xMzAyMDExNjAxMDNaFw0xNTAyMDExNjExMDNa <—–vCenter Cert

SMhYhbv3wr7XraAnsIaBYCeg+J7fKTFgjA8bTwC+dVTaOSXQuhnZfrOVxlfJ/Ydm

NS7WBBBFd9V4FPyRDPER/QMVl+xyoaMGw0QKnslmq/JvID4FPd0/QD62RAsTntXI

ATa+CS6MjloKFgRaGnKAAFPsrEeGjb2JgMOpIfbdx4KT3WkspsK3KPwFPoYza4ih

4eT2HwhcUs4wo7X/XQd+CZjttoLsSyCk5tCmOGU6xLaE1s08R6sz9mM=

—–END CERTIFICATE—–

—–BEGIN CERTIFICATE—–

MIIDZzCCAk+gAwIBAgIQNO7aLfykR4pE94tcRe0vyDANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQUFADBG

K73RIKZaDkBOuUlRSIfgfovUFJrdwGtMWo3m4dpN7csQAjK/uixfJDVRG0nXk9pq

GXaS5/YCv5B4q4T+j5pa2f+a61ygjN1YQRoZf2CHLe7Zq89Xv90nhPM4foWdNNkr <—–Intermediate Cert

/Esf1E6fnrItsXpIchQOmvQViis12YyUvwko2aidjVm9sML0ANiLJZSoQ9Zs/WGC

TLqwbQm6tNyFB8c=

—–END CERTIFICATE—–

—–BEGIN CERTIFICATE—–MIIDZzCCAk+gAwIBAgIQNO7aLfykR4pE94tcRe0vyDANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQUFADBG

K73RIKZaDkBOuUlRSIfgfovUFJrdwGtMWo3m4dpN7csQAjK/uixfJDVRG0nXk9pq

GXaS5/YCv5B4q4T+j5pa2f+a61ygjN1YQRoZf2CHLe7Zq89Xv90nhPM4foWdNNkr <—–Root Cert

/Esf1E6fnrItsXpIchQOmvQViis12YyUvwko2aidjVm9sML0ANiLJZSoQ9Zs/WGC

TLqwbQm6tNyFB8c=

—–END CERTIFICATE—–

 

Save the above file has cacert.pem under C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\SSL.

We later went ahead re-ran the upgrade and it just proceeded further to complete successfully.

 

Hope this article was helpful. Watchout for more.

 

 

Ritesh Shenoy
Hey, My name is Ritesh Shenoy working as a Senior Consultant for SAP. The goal of this blog is to contribute towards VMware community and make ones life better with necessary content in place!

2 Comments

  1. Thanks for the article – I”m in the middle currently in the same situation. Could you please advice where I could find these certificates: “Copy vCenter certificate, intermediate cert(if any)and root certificate on the same location as mentioned above.”. I presume I got no intermediate, but how about the rest of them – vCenter and the root certificate? What is theirs name and location over the filesystem?

    Thanks a lot in advance

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