VCF 9.0 deployment fails at "Generate and Install VMCA Certificate on SDDC Manager" stage with error "Failed to install VMCA Certificate on SDDC Manager 127.0.0.1 Reference Token: <ID>"

Products

• VMware Cloud Foundation

Issue/Introduction

• A new VCF 9.0 deployment fails at "Generate and Install VMCA Certificate on SDDC Manager" stage with error "Failed to install VMCA Certificate on SDDC Manager 127.0.0.1 Reference Token: <ID>".

• The newly deployed SDDC Manager is accessible from both the user Interface and the command line.
  
  
• When validating the /etc/hosts file of the newly deployed SDDC Manager appliance, the FQDN is mapped to the loopback IP Address and not the appliance IP Address. Below is how the /etc/hosts file of the affected appliance looks like.
  
  127.0.0.1   localhost.localdomain
127.0.0.1   localhost
127.0.0.1   FQDN_of_SDDC manager

Environment

• VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0
• VMware SDDC Manager

Cause

During the certificate validations, the commonsvcs api does a validation of FQDN resolution. The IP address 127.0.0.1 is the loopback address, which always refers to the device itself. It is not a valid IP for the SDDC Manager.

Resolution

Take a snapshot of the SDDC manager VM and follow the steps below.

1. Take a SSH session to the SDDC Manager appliance.
   
   
2. Switch to the root user using the command below.
   
   sudo su
   
   
3. Take a backup of the /etc/hosts file as below.
   
   cp /etc/hosts /etc/hosts.bak


4. Edit the /etc/hosts file as below.
   
   vi /etc/hosts
   
   
5. Comment out the line where the SDDC Manager FQDN is mapped to 127.0.0.1 (add # at the start of the line) and add the line where the SDDC FQDN is mapped to real IP address (for example 192.168.x.x). Below is how the file should look like.
   
   127.0.0.1   localhost.localdomain
127.0.0.1   localhost
# 127.0.0.1   <FQDN_of_SDDC manager>
192.168.x.x <FQDN_of_SDDC manager>


6. Save the file after making the above changes.
   
   
7. Restart SDDC manager services using the command below.
   
   /opt/vmware/vcf/operationsmanager/scripts/cli/sddcmanager_restart_services.sh


8. Click on the Retry button in the VCF Installer Home page to make another attempt.