"Unable to get certificates from the store APPLMGMT_PASSWORD" logged periodically in vpxd.log

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Administrators may observe the following error messages recorded daily in the vCenter Server vpxd.log file:

YYYY-mm-ddTHH:MM:SS.zzzZ error vpxd[#####] [Originator@6876 sub=Main opID=CheckCertificateExpiry-########] Unable to get certificate count for APPLMGMT_PASSWORD from VECS localhost, error: 0, error info: other failure
YYYY-mm-ddTHH:MM:SS.zzzZ error vpxd[#####] [Originator@6876 sub=Main opID=CheckCertificateExpiry-########] Unable to get certificates from the store APPLMGMT_PASSWORD

Environment

vCenter Server 8.x

Cause

vCenter Server periodically runs a background routine to monitor and check for expiring certificates across VMware Endpoint Certificate Store (VECS) stores.

The APPLMGMT_PASSWORD store is used by the system to securely manage and store passwords for the File-Based Scheduled Backup feature, rather than storing standard SSL/TLS certificates. Because it is expected and normal for this specific store to contain no certificate entries, the certificate expiration monitor logs a false-positive error when it finds zero certificates to check.

Resolution

This issue is resolved in vCenter Server 8.0 Update 3 and later.
The certificate monitoring mechanism has been optimized to exclude non-certificate stores such as APPLMGMT_PASSWORD, preventing these specific log messages from being generated.

For vCenter Server versions prior to 8.0 Update 3, these log messages are harmless and can be safely ignored.