Vrealize

It’s a common practice to replace self-signed certificates, that are used in several VMware products, with CA signed certificates. I did this in my lab for my vCenter Server Appliance and my VMware Update Manager. While I was working with vRealize Orchestrator I noticed, that it is also using self-signed certificates (what else?). For completeness, I decided to replace the self-signed certificates with CA signed.

My lab environment

1. VMware vSphere 5.5 environment running a vCenter Server appliance (already using CA signed certificates)
2. vRealize Orchestrator Appliance 5.5.2 (not version 5.5.2.1,  because I had problems with this release)
3. Microsoft Windows CA running on a Windows 2012 R2 Standard server

You don’t need a Microsoft Windows CA. You can use any other CA. There is no need to use a special vendor. I use a windows-based CA in my lab, so the screenshots reflect this fact. The way how certificates are replaced differs between vRealize Orchestrator Appliance and the windows-based standalone or vCenter Server embedded version. If you use the in the vCenter Server embedded or Standalone Orchestrator check Derek Seamans VMware vSphere 5.5 SSL Toolkit. I used the Orchestrator appliance.

VMware vCloud Hybrid Service (vCHS) stands in one line with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Rackspace Cloud or other cloud offerings. I don’t want to compare the different provider with vCHS. To be honest: This article is more a summary for myself, than really new content. I just want to summarize information about the IaaS offering of VMware. If you want a comparison of vCHS and AWS, I recommend to read this article written by Alex Mattson (AHEAD).