6.5.1

Table Of Contents
Use Custom Certificates With vSphere
If company policy requires it, you can replace some or all certificates used in vSphere with certificates that
are signed by a third-party or enterprise CA. If you do that, VMCA is not in your certificate chain. You are
responsible for storing all vCenter certificates in VECS.
You can replace all certificates or use a hybrid solution. For example, consider replacing all certificates
that are used for network traffic but leaving VMCA-signed solution user certificates. Solution user
certificates are used only for authentication to vCenter Single Sign-On.
Note If you do not want to use VMCA, you are responsible for replacing all certificates yourself, for
provisioning new components with certificates, and for keeping track of certificate expiration.
Even if you decide to use custom certificates, you can still use the VMware Certificate Manager utility for
certificate replacement. See Replace All Certificates with Custom Certificate (Certificate Manager).
If you encounter problems with vSphere Auto Deploy after replacing certificates, see VMware Knowledge
Base Article 2000888.
Procedure
1 Request Certificates and Import a Custom Root Certificate
You can use custom certificates from an enterprise or third-party CA. The first step is requesting the
certificates from the CA and importing the root certificates into VECS.
2 Replace Machine SSL Certificates With Custom Certificates
After you receive the custom certificates, you can replace each machine certificate.
3 Replace Solution User Certificates With Custom Certificates
After you replace the machine SSL certificates, you can replace the VMCA-signed solution user
certificates with third-party or enterprise certificates.
4 Replace the VMware Directory Service Certificate in Mixed Mode Environments
During upgrade, your environment might temporarily include both vCenter Single Sign-On version
5.5 and vCenter Single Sign-On version 6.x. For that case, you have to perform additional steps to
replace the VMware Directory Service SSL certificate if you replace the SSL certificate of the node
on which the vCenter Single Sign-On service is running.
Request Certificates and Import a Custom Root Certificate
You can use custom certificates from an enterprise or third-party CA. The first step is requesting the
certificates from the CA and importing the root certificates into VECS.
Prerequisites
The certificate must meet the following requirements:
n
Key size: 2048 bits or more (PEM encoded)
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