vCenter upgrade error of Failed to get an SSL thumbprint of the appliance server certificate

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

In Stage 1:Deploy vCenter Server this error was received:

Failed to get an SSL thumbprint of the appliance server certificate for <vCenter Hostname>

Cause

Looking at the installer client logs at C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp\vcsaUiInstaller\installer-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS###.log

In the recently executed log are entries about failed attempts to connect to the vCenter that reference an IPv6 address.

DNS was configured to provide IPv4 and IPv6 addresses but the vCenter was only configured with IPv4 settings, causing the error of failing to get the SSL thumbprint because it couldn't connect.

Resolution

To correct this issue we recommend either:

1. Remove the IPv6 address from the DNS configuration for the vCenter server.
2. Adding IPv6 static address to the vCenter networking configuration through the appliance management interface on port 5480 so it is configured as a dual stack.

You can disable IPv6 on the local client machine that you are doing the upgrade from and that will let you continue, but you will likely run into another pre-check error about the IPv6 not being configured on the vCenter that will not let you continue until one of the above options is implemented.

NOTE:  If you have checked for the presence of IPv6 DNS records for vCenter determined IPv6 is not in use, then please open a support case for further investigation.