VSphere

How to Change VMware ESXi Machine Certificates

Changing VMware esxi machine certificates.

I recently needed this, and the vmware documentation is describing a lot more steps than i think is needed. I had some nested esxi servers with the wrong hostname/IP, so i changed it, but i also needed to fix the machine certificate to reflect my recent change.

vstellar.com has a great post about this:

The steps to generate a new ESXi host certificate are detailed here:

  • Step 1. Log in to the ESXi shell as the root user.

  • Step 2. Back up any existing certificates, just in case.

mv /etc/vmware/ssl/rui.crt /etc/vmware/ssl/rui.crt.old

  • mv /etc/vmware/ssl/rui.key /etc/vmware/ssl/rui.key.old

NOTE: If the rui.crt and rui.key files do not exist then you do not need to back them up; you can just go to the next step.

  • Step 3. Generate the new certificates:

/sbin/generate-certificates

  • Step 4. Reboot the ESXi host or restart the hostd process:

/etc/init.d/hostd/restart

  • Thats it!