ssl

Since my last article on how to update Cloud Director SSL certificates, there has been a major change. No more binary java truststore – jaaay.

Cloud Director has changed over too, what I think, is a better and more normal way of storing the private and public keys, which is in PEM format. From release notes, the change actually happened in 10.2, but the certificate path changed again in 10.3. If you are in doubt of where the certificate path is then look inside global.properties

/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/etc/global.properties

VMware’s own documentation state that we can now just swap the .pem files, use the cell-management tool to import and restart the cell.

What we will do and what is needed

Get a new public signed certificate
- Either in PEM format as .key and .pem(certificate including intermediate)
- Or in PFX so it can be exported
Backup existing certificates
Replace existing certificates with your new certificate
Run VCD tool to import and define the private key encryption password
Restart cell(s)

Process

If you have a pfx you can use this article to extract the key and cert. If you already have the two files, .key end .pem then you can proceed.

We will follow VMware documentation and create a backup of the existing files.

cp /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/etc/user.http.pem /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/etc/user.http.pem.original
cp /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/etc/user.http.key /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/etc/user.http.key.original
cp /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/etc/user.consoleproxy.pem /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/etc/user.consoleproxy.pem.original
cp /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/etc/user.consoleproxy.key /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/etc/user.consoleproxy.key.original

Now we can wither SCP in our key and certificate or edit and replace the content of the files on the server by copying and pasting in content from the files you have. Whatever you find to be the easiest.

Forgot your root password for the Cloud Director appliance, off cause not. But anyway, here is a link to reset it....

After the “user.http.pem/key” and “user.consoleproxy.pem/key” files have been updated with the new certificate data we can tell Cloud Dictor to update its config with the commands below. This is done to update the encryption password for the private key.

If you don’t care about security you can also update without –key-password, then off cause your private key will need to be in an unencrypted format in the .key files.

/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/cell-management-tool certificates -j --cert /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/etc/user.consoleproxy.pem --key /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/etc/user.consoleproxy.key --key-password PASSWD
/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/cell-management-tool certificates -p --cert /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/etc/user.http.pem --key /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/etc/user.http.key --key-password PASSWD

If everything works out it will tell you the certificates have been updated and you need to restart VCD for it to take effect.

SSL configuration has been updated. You will need to restart the cell for changes to take effect.

Now safely shut down your cell(s) with the command below. this will ensure that VCD is the first shutdown when all tasks are done.

/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/cell-management-tool cell -i $(service vmware-vcd pid cell) -s

Start again with the command below

systemctl start vmware-vcd

Conclusion

VMware has made it much easier to change a certificate in Cloud Director. The new way of storing certificates is a warm welcome change.

I did see a few different placements for the .key and .pem files depending on versions or if the cells have been created with raw Linux or an appliance, but you can always look in the conflig file placed in the same folder as the certificates.

In this post, I will explain how to install a public certificate into vCloud Director cell(s). This exact environment has a public signed cert that is up for renewal. A new certificate has been bought and signed and is ready to import.

vcd cells have 2 IP addresses that allow support for 2 different SSL endpoints (http and consoleproxy). Each endpoint requires its own SSL certificate. vCloud Director uses a java keystore to read its SSL certificates from. In a multi-cell environment, you need to create 2 certificates for each cell and import the certificates into the vcd java keystore. But since we hare here using a wildcard certificate the same certificate will be used to but endpoints.

The new certificate have been created with a CSR that was not generated from the vCloud cells, so we need to import both private and public key from an export of the certificate. In this case it’s a .PFX.

Certificate is a wildcard. If you are using a UCC SAN certificate with the exact names then be sure that the names in certificate are matching accordingly to vCloud settings.

I assume you got

Already working/configured vCloud environment
New public signed certificate exported to a .PFX format (contains both public and private key)

We will

Connect to cell with winscp and transfer the .PFX to /tmp/
Connect to cell with Putty
- Create a new keystore with the new certificate
- Stop vcd service
- Swap old keystore with new
- Start vcd service

Initialize certificate change…

winscp copy the .pfx to the cell tmp directory

The commands for creating the new keystore and importing the cert is below. Change the STOREPASS and KEYPASS to something meaningful for your environment. It is also important to notice that the alias of each certificate must be “http” and “consoleproxy”. Else vcd won’t find the certs.

A note about the alias, I have seen it generate GUID but also just numbers. So if your list command is showing “1” then you need to change alias 1 to respectively http or consoleproxy.

### Stop vCloud Director service
service vmware-vcd stop

### make passwords variable in unix
STOREPASS= <pass>
KEYPASS= <pass>

### Add the certificate to a new created certificates.ks keystore.
/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/jre/bin/keytool \
-keystore /tmp/certificates.ks \
-storepass STOREPASS \
-keypass KEYPASS \
-storetype JCEKS \
-importkeystore \
-srckeystore /tmp/wildcard2020.pfx

### List certificate alias
/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/jre/bin/keytool \
-storetype JCEKS \
-storepass STOREPASS \
-keystore /tmp/certificates.ks \
-list | grep -i alias

### Rename certificate random alias to http
/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/jre/bin/keytool \
-storetype JCEKS \
-changealias \-alias "te-d487d1c7-2c76-482a-8e61-69107ee3027f" \
-destalias http -keystore /tmp/certificates.ks

### Add the Remote Console Proxy certificate to a new created certificates.ks keystore.
/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/jre/bin/keytool \
-keystore /tmp/certificates.ks \
-storepass STOREPASS \
-keypass KEYPASS \
-storetype JCEKS \
-importkeystore \
-srckeystore /tmp/wildcard2020.pfx

### List certificate alias
/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/jre/bin/keytool \
-storetype JCEKS \
-storepass STOREPASS \
-keystore /tmp/certificates.ks -list | grep -i alias

### Rename certificate random alias to consoleproxy
/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/jre/bin/keytool \
-storetype JCEKS \
-changealias \
-alias "te-d487d1c7-2c76-482a-8e61-69107ee3027f" \
-destalias consoleproxy \
-keystore certificates.ks

### Make a backup of the existing keystore 
cp /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/certificates.ks /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/certificates.ks_old

### Copy the new keystore file to the vCloud Director environment
cp /tmp/certificates.ks /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/certificates.ks

### Set correct permissions to the keystore file
chown vcloud:vcloud /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/certificates.ks
chmod 600 /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/certificates.ks

### Make cells generate proxy console certs based on new keystore.
cd /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin
./cell-management-tool certificates -p -k /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/certificates.ks -w STOREPASS

### Start vCloud Director service
service vmware-vcd start

To see if the cell have booted correctly you can tail the cell log. It will give you a “startup completed in x”.

 tail -f /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/logs/cell.log

I got more than one cell…

That’s awesome – me too. You can scp the certificate from the cell with the new cert to the other cells. So let’s get that newly created keystore over the other cells.

### SSH to next cell and stop the vCloud Director service
service vmware-vcd stop

### Go to keystore path
cd /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/

### Move the existing to new filename with .old surfix.
mv certificate.ks certificate.ks.old

### Copy the new certificate into place
scp root@dc1svcdcell01:/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/certificates.ks .

### Make cells generate proxy console certs based on new keystore.
./cell-management-tool certificates -p -k /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/certificates.ks -w KEYSTORE_PASSWD

### Start vCloud Director service
service vmware-vcd start

I hope you enjoyed reading this post. Feel free to share this on social media if it is worth sharing.

Cloud Director 10.3 – Update certificates