Exporting an image from the Lifecycle Manager section of vCenter fails

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

When the image is exported using Lifecycle Manager (please refer Export an Image, for more information) the operation fails.

The behavior might be one of:

1. A new tab opens but nothing gets downloaded

2. A new tab opens, the download operation might start but there is an error as mentioned: "The connection for this site is not secure" or "This site can’t provide a secure connection"

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 7.0.0
VMware vCenter Server 7.0.3
VMware vCenter Server 6.x
VMware vCenter Server 7.0.2
VMware vCenter Server 7.0.1

Cause

Chrome, Firefox and many other browsers have stopped supporting mixed content downloading. Mixed content downloading is the process of downloading a file off a HTTP link in a page that is HTTPS.
vCenter used to export the images on the HTTP only port 9084. Since the vCenter itself runs as a HTTPS page, this resulted in the mixed content downloading and was blocked by the browsers, resulting in a failure to export the image.

Resolution

The issue has been fixed in VMware vSphere 7.0 U3i and VMware vSphere 8.0.

Workaround:

To workaround the issue, when the browser opens the new tab (and displays the error), please change the port in the URL from 9084 to 9087 and hit Enter. The file should start downloading.