Unity VASA certificate has expired and does not allow to refresh it and storage appears disconnected.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• Workaround to get new certificates generated from Dell EMC Unity so that it can be added as VASA storage provider from vSphere 

Symptoms:

• Unable to refresh storage provider with expired certificate: 

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Error:    The storage provider certificate has expired. Remove the selected storage provider, provision a valid self-signed certificate for it, and then add it back.

• Rescan errors : Details:

com.vmware.vim.sms.fault.ProviderNotActiveException: Provider f1b3a9d1-####-####-####-##########b9 is not active!!!
"com.vmware.vim.sms.fault.ProviderNotActiveException: Provider f1b3a9d1-####-####-####-##########b9 is not active!!!"

• Cause:

Provider f1b3a9d1-####-####-####-##########b9 is not active!!!

"Provider f1b3a9d1-####-####-####-##########b9 is not active!!!"

• The provider certificate is invalid. It is either empty, malformed, expired, not yet valid, revoked, or fails host name verification.

Environment

VMware vSphere 6.5.x
VMware vSphere 7.0.x

Cause

• The certificate was not refreshed before expiry data for the VASA storage provider

Resolution

• There is no resolution after the certificate has expired.

Workaround:

• Note: This is only valid for Storage providers from Dell EMC Unity.
• Following steps to get new certificates generated from Unity so that it can be added as VASA storage provider from vSphere :
  • Log in to Unity CLI (use service account).
  • View existing certificates on Unity for VASA using below command:

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uemcli -d <IP address of unity> -u local/admin -p <password of Unity admin account> /sys/cert -service VASA_HTTP show -detail 

• Delete all the present certificates one by one using below command:

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uemcli -d <IP address of unity> -u local/admin -p <password of Unity admin account> /sys/cert -id <value> delete 

• Add Unity as VASA storage provider on vSphere.

If any error encountered contact Storage Provider Dell EMC Unity referencing the article 510045