SDDC manager certificate replacement fails with error ' Validations did not pass'

Products

• VMware Cloud Foundation

Issue/Introduction

SDDC manager certificate replacement fails with a blank error in the UI

/var/log/vmware/vcf/vcf-commonsvcs.log indicates below:

 ERROR [] [c.v.e.s.e.h.LocalizableRuntimeExceptionHandler,http-nio-127.0.0.1-####-#####] [D2UMUJ] CERT_REPLACEMENT_FAILED Cannot replace existing certificate with the input cert. Validations did not pass.

Environment

VMware Cloud Foundation 5.x

Cause

The upgrade validation failed because the /etc/hosts file contained an entry mapping the SDDC Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) to the loopback address:

127.0.0.1 <SDDC FQDN>

Resolution

• Take a valid snapshot of SDDC VM
• Review the /etc/hosts file and remove the incorrect entry. Specifically, remove the line where sddc is mapped to the loopback address (for example, 127.0.0.1).
• After removing the entry, save the file and exit the editor.
• For reference, /etc/hosts should appear as below: