VxRAIL Plugin Missing from vCenter (VCF): SOLVED

I recently ran into an issue with a VCF on VxRAIL platform, where the VxRAIL Plugin was mysteriously removed from the vCenter GUI.

Since the release of VxRAIL 4.7.300, the VxRAIL Management Plugin functionality is embedded into the vCenter GUI. It had been a separate web interface in the previous versions.

Recently there were some certificate issues in my environment which might have caused instability across some of the management components. When logging into vCenter a few days back I noticed that the VxRAIL Plugin had been removed from the vCenter GUI, and an error message in the Recent Tasks pane:

The VxRAIL Plugin with failed deployment:

The detailed error message showed:

Error downloading plug-in. Make sure that the URL is reachable and the registered thumbprint is correct. sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilder.build(SunCertPathBuilder.java:141)

The error message also shows the wrong VxRAIL version (7.0). We are running 4.7.525. This is a cosmetic bug and can be ignored (it will go away when the issue is resolved).

This issue here is that that vCenter is missing the VxRAIL Manager Plugin SSL thumbprint.

Perform the following steps in order to resolve the plugin issue.

Step 1: Log into the VxRAIL manager with the mystic user and find the SHA1 Fingerprint.

mystic@vxm01:~> openssl s_client -connect localhost:443 | openssl x509 -fingerprint -noout -sha1

Step 2: Go back to vCenter and verify that the thumbprint listed for the VxRAIL Manager VM matches in the Cluster > Summary > Custom Attributes section.

Verify that the thumbprints match. If they do not, edit the custom attributes section with the SSL thumbprint of the VxRAIL Manager. But make sure to snapshot the vCenter and the VxRAIL Manager before editing these values.

You should see the VxRAIL Plugin functionality now available in vCenter under the Monitor and Configure sections:

If these steps do not resolve the issue (the VxRAIL Plugin still not working) then you will need to open an SR case with Dell support so that they can run a script (intellectual property of DellEMC) which will perform several checks and will essentially un-register / re-register the plugin components with vCenter.

The steps I provided above should resolve the issue, but if not, the DellEMC SR with script option is available.