Workload vCenter missing from Licensing Management in VCF Operations 9.x after certificate rotation

Products

• VMware Cloud Foundation

Issue/Introduction

• After renewing SSL certificates on a workload vCenter, the vCenter system no longer appears under vCenter Systems on the Licensing page in VCF Operations.
• The standard VMware adapter remains Healthy and continues collecting data.
• The Infrastructure Management Adapter fails with a PKIX path building failed error when attempting to connect to the workload vCenter.
• VCF Operations marks the vCenter as NOT_LICENSE_MANAGED_VCENTER, preventing license entitlement pushes to downstream components like NSX Manager.

Environment

VCF 9.x

Cause

Stale registration metadata in the licensing plugin prevents the UI from updating. In VCF 9.x, the Infrastructure Management Adapter uses a separate connection path from the standard collection adapter. If this specific trust path is broken during a certificate change, the licensing component fails to recognize the vCenter as managed.

Resolution

Toggle the "License Management" state to force a fresh trust handshake and purge stale metadata:

1. Deactivate Management:
   • Navigate to Administration > Integrations.
   • Edit the VCF adapter instance and click Manage Integrations.
   • Uncheck the License Management box for all vCenters and save the changes.
2. Purge View:
   • Wait approximately 15 minutes for the vCenter Systems table on the Licensing page to clear completely (it should show no rows).
3. Re-activate Management:
   • Return to Administration > Integrations and edit the VCF adapter instance.
   • Click Activate Management.
   • Select both the management and workload vCenters and save the configuration.

Justification: Toggling the "License Management" state forces VCF Operations to purge stale connection metadata. Re-activating it triggers a new discovery and authentication cycle, allowing vCenters to correctly repopulate in the licensing table.