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You can no longer use the vSphere 5.5 certificate replacement tool, which was available for vSphere
5.5 installations. The new architecture results in a different service distribution and placement. A new
command-line utility, vSphere Certificate Manager, is available for most certificate management tasks.
vSphere Certificate Interfaces
For vCenter Server, you can view and replace certificates with the following tools and interfaces.
Table 33. Interfaces for Managing vCenter Server Certificates
Interface Use
vSphere Client Perform common certificate tasks with a graphical user
interface.
vSphere Certificate Manager utility Perform common certificate replacement tasks from the
command line of the vCenter Server installation.
Certificate management CLIs Perform all certificate management tasks with dir-cli,
certool, and vecs-cli.
vSphere Web Client View certificates, including expiration information.
For ESXi, you perform certificate management from the vSphere Web Client. VMCA provisions
certificates and stores them locally on the ESXi host. VMCA does not store ESXi host certificates in
VMDIR or in VECS. See the vSphere Security documentation.
Supported vCenter Certificates
For vCenter Server, the Platform Services Controller, and related machines and services, the following
certificates are supported:
n
Certificates that are generated and signed by VMware Certificate Authority (VMCA).
n
Custom certificates.
n
Enterprise certificates that are generated from your own internal PKI.
n
Third-party CA-signed certificates that are generated by an external PKI such as Verisign,
GoDaddy, and so on.
Self-signed certificates that were created using OpenSSL in which no Root CA exists are not supported.
Certificate Replacement Overview
You can perform different types of certificate replacement depending on company policy and
requirements for the system that you are configuring. You can perform certificate replacement from the
Platform Services Controller, by using the vSphere Certificate Manager utility or manually by using the
CLIs included with your installation.
VMCA is included in each Platform Services Controller and in each embedded deployment. VMCA
provisions each node, each vCenter Server solution user, and each ESXi host with a certificate that is
signed by VMCA as the certificate authority. vCenter Server solution users are groups of vCenter Server
services.
Platform Services Controller Administration
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