Opening the web portal shows a certificate warning.

Products

• VMware Aria Suite
• VMware Aria Operations for Networks
• VMware Cloud Director
• VMware SDDC Manager
• VMware NSX
• VMware Live Recovery

Issue/Introduction

After replacing the certificate used with a self-signed or company CA (Certificate Authority) signed certificate the web browser shows a certificate warning.

The issue can also occur on new deployed environments where a self-signed or company CA (Certificate Authority) signed certificate is used.

Cause

Each web browser does attempt to validate the certificate used by reviewing the certificate issuer / certificate authority. 

If the used certificate authority is not known to the browser, the browser will attempt to review trusted certificate stored on the machine where the web browser is installed.

If the certificate can not be validated by the web browser then a warning message will be displayed for the end user to be aware of a possible risk.

Resolution

To avoid the issue the web browser needs to be able to validate the used Certificate Authority, which can be achieved by adding the certificate issuer (Certificate Authority) to the trust store of either the web browser used or machine where the web browser is installed.

For self-signed certificate the certificate does not use a certificate issuer, to avoid the warning the self-signed certificate can be added to the trust store of the web browser or the machine.