VCF installer: Datacenter Create Task workflow failed while authenticating the vCenter

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager

Issue/Introduction

VCF installer workflow fails during the vCenter Datacenter creation phase when adding ESXi hosts, and terminates with the following error. Failed to login to server 'FQDN.local' as user '[email protected]' with error '[SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: certificate is not yet valid (_ssl.c:1006)'. 

/var/log/vmware/vcf/domainmanager/ci-installer-DD-MM-YYYY-##-##-##/workflow_#####/taskflow.log

 "com.vmware.vcsa.installer.datacenter_creation": {
        "description": "Creating the new datacenter.",
        "status": "FAILED",
        "start_time": "DD-MM-YYYYTHH:MM:SS",
        "last_updated_time": "DD-MM-YYYYTHH:MM:SS",
        "end_time": "DD-MM-YYYYTHH:MM:SS",
        "progress": {
          "completed": 0,
          "total": 1,
          "message": {
            "default_message": "Task DatacenterCreateTask failed because Cannot connect to 'FQDN.local' on which the vCenter Server Appliance is running. The exception message is 'Failed to login to server 'FQDN.local' as user '[email protected]' with error '[SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: certificate is not yet valid (_ssl.c:1006)'. If the error message contains references about messages being expired, a login problem, or its context indicates a timing issue, a possible reason could be system clock skew. Refer to error messages in 'taskflow.log' for more details. ' Check the credentials provided for this server in the template file. If a proxy server is present, make sure its policy does not block connections to this server., please check /var/log/vmware/vcf/domainmanager/ci-installer-DD-MM-YYYY-##-##-##/workflow_######/ci-conf-#######/taskflow.log for more details",

Environment

VCF 9.x 

Cause

Time synchronization failure due to NTP configuration or connectivity issue

Resolution

• Ensure system clocks are synchronized across all VCF installer nodes and ESXi hosts.
• Validate time synchronization by executing the date command on each VCF installer node, the vCenter Server, and all target ESXi hosts, and verify that timestamps are consistent.
• Resolve any time discrepancies prior to initiating host addition or configuration workflows.