Cannot view or add vSAN Storage Providers in the vSphere Web Client

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

Regenerate SSL certificates and re-register the vSAN Storage Providers to resolve this issue.

Symptoms:

• Cannot view or manually add VMware vSAN (formerly known as Virtual SAN) Storage Providers in the vSphere Web Client.
• You see the error:
  The Register new storage provider operation failed for the entity with the following error message.
  A Problem was encountered while registering the provider

Note: For specific symptoms and log entries, see the Additional Information section.

Environment

VMware vSAN 8.x
VMware vSAN 7.x
VMware vSAN 6.7.x
VMware vSAN 5.5.x
VMware vSAN 6.1.x
VMware vSAN 6.2.x
VMware vSAN 6.0.x

Cause

This issue occurs if SMS certificates are expired.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, you must regenerate SSL certificates and re-register the vSAN Storage Providers.

1. To regenerate the SSL certificates:
   1. Log in to vCenter Server and navigate to C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\SSL.
   2. Move sms.keystore and sms.truststore files to a temporary location or rename these files.
   3. On Windows Administrative Services, restart both VMware vSphere Storage Driven Profile service and VirtualCenter Server service
   4. Wait for a few minutes and ensure that both the files are regenerated in C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\SSL.
       
2. To re-register the vSAN Storage Providers:
   1. Unregister all vSAN Storage Providers from the VMware vSphere Web Client. For more information, see the Register Storage Providers 
   2. Click Resync (next to the Register) to re-register all vSAN Storage Providers.

Additional Information

You experience these additional symptoms:

• In the VMware vSphere Web Client, vSAN Storage Providers that were previously online report an offline or disconnected status.
• In the C:\ProgramData\VMware\Infrastructure\Profile-Driven Storage\Logs\sps.log file on vCenter Server, you see entries similar to:
  
  ...] ERROR opId=90c4a3b5-0335-4451-b5a1-569f9360724a com.vmware.vim.sms.provider.vasa.VasaProviderImpl - SetContext failed!
  com.vmware.vim.sms.fault.VasaServiceException: org.apache.axis2.AxisFault: certificate has expired