Cannot connect to vCenter when setting up protection group in VMware Cloud Director Availability

Products

• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

• Creating a new replication results in an error similar to the following:
  
  Unable to connect to vCenter '########-####-####-####-############'.
  
  
• This issue only impacts some replications.
• There are multiple replicators in the impacted site.
• The vCenter server certificate was recently updated.

Environment

VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.7.3.x

Cause

If a new vCenter certificate is not accepted on all replicators, replicators that are not updated will fail to trust the vCenter and be unable to successfully complete the creation of replications assigned to them.

Resolution

There are several services that may be attempting to validate the VMware vCenter certificate in VMware Cloud Director Availability. By performing the procedure documented in the following, the certificate can be manually accepted for each, if it is not already:

Configure the services to accept the vCenter Server Lookup service certificate and optionally allow SSO