"Authentication Source certificate expiring" warning in VMWare Aria Operations

Products

• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

Upon navigating to Administration > Control Panel > Trusted Certificates, an expiration warning is visible for the LDAP authentication source certificate.

Environment

VMWare Aria Operations 8.18.5

Cause

When configured with LDAP as an authentication source, VMware Aria Operations utilizes a Trust on First Use (TOFU) mechanism to ingest the server's certificate. Because these certificates carry a specific validity period, the system will trigger a warning notification as the expiration date approaches to prevent authentication failures.

Resolution

The certificate should be refreshed to prevent authentication failures and mitigate this warning. 

• Navigate to: Administration > Control Panel > Authentication Sources.
• Click the three dots (ellipsis) next to your source and select Edit.
• Click Test Connection.
• Aria will detect that the certificate in its trust store doesn't match the new one being offered by the server. It will show a pop-up with the new certificate details.
• Click Accept and then Save.

This overwrites the old entry in the trust store with the new one and will allow authentications to continue.