CSR Generation Fails in SDDC Manager for vCenter with error message "Failed to generate CSRs. Generate CSR failed."

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager / VCF Installer

Issue/Introduction

Generating a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) for vCenter from the SDDC Manager UI fails almost immediately.

• The UI displays a generic error: "Failed to generate CSRs. Generate CSR failed."

In /var/log/vmware/vcf/operationsmanager/operationsmanager.log, the following error is observed:

DEBUG [vcf_om,,] Processing localizable exception Resource(s) [vCenter-FQDN], is/are not active.
ERROR [vcf_om,,] [APLHJU] CERTIFICATE_CSR_GENERATION_FAILED Resource(s) [vCenter-FQDN], is/are not active.
com.vmware.vcf.certmgmt.common.exception.CertMgmtRestException: Resource(s) [vCenter-FQDN], is/are not active.

Environment

VCF 5.x

Cause

The SDDC Manager platform database reflects an incorrect status for the vCenter resource. If the vCenter status is set to ERROR or any status other than ACTIVE, the Certificate Management service will reject the CSR generation request because it perceives the resource as unavailable for management operations.

Resolution

Log in to the SDDC Manager appliance via SSH as vcf and switch to root.

• Run the following query to check the current status of the vCenter resource:
  bash /usr/pgsql/13/bin/psql -h localhost -U postgres -d platform -c "select id, vm_hostname, status from vcenter;" 

If the status column for the failing vCenter shows ERROR open support case with Broadcom support