vSphere Replication ‘Solution user detail’ certificate is invalid

I came across an odd ball today when upgrading a customers vSphere Replication appliance from 5.8.1 to 6.0. For those who have done a VR in place upgrade before, you will know that there is really not much to it; Mount ISO, Install Update, Reboot, done. When VR 6.0 was introduced an additional step is required after you perform the upgrade, you had to go in and register it with your lookup service. All this requires is the lookup service url and the SSO administrator credentials and you’re done as per the documentation here.

Instead I was presented with this error message:

'Solution user detail' certificate is invalid - certificateException java.security.cert.CertificateExpiredException: NotAfter: Fri Jun 17 23:01:55 UTC 2016

Its probably worth noting that this has come off the back of a vCenter upgrade to 6.5, so ‘solution user’ automatically got me looking at SSO solution users in the web client and the vCenter extension manager to validate that the certificate thumbprints matched up.

Sure enough, the thumbprint that was registered with vCenter matched the one of the vSphere Replication appliance. My google-fu didnt get me any furhter either, next thing that came to mind was ssh and logs. I saw the secuiry tab and figured I would enable ssh from there…nope, no enable ssh option there dummy. What I did see on the secuirty tab was this.

Right, expity date matches the error message!

So here is what you need to do:

Head back over on the configuration page there is a “Install a new SSL Certificate” section where you can generate and install a self signed or your own certificate.

Hit the Generate and Install button, validate the warning that it will overwrite the existing one and let it do its thing.

 

Once it is done, you will be prompted by the following message.

Reload your brower like it states, even though it seems as if does it when it takes you do the login page.

Once you’re back in, populate your Lookup Service URL and SSO Administrator credentials at the configuration tab and hit Save and Restart service. If all went well, you should get the below message.